


Legacies

by vanishingact



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1880s, Alternate Universe - Historical, Awkward Flirting, Bisexual Dean, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Castiel & Charlie Bradbury Friendship, Charlie Bradbury & Dean Winchester Friendship, Charlie is Celeste Middleton, Demisexual Castiel, Fanart, Fear of Discovery, First Kiss, First Time, Frottage, Grey-Asexual Castiel, Hand Jobs, Haunted House, Historical, Horror, Hunters & Hunting, Illustrated, Light Horror, M/M, Masturbation, Mystery, New England, Period-Typical Closeting, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Burn, The Winchester Family, Though Not Too Slow, Virgin Castiel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-04-11 02:10:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 26,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4417007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanishingact/pseuds/vanishingact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel Milton's uneventful life as a Massachusetts lawyer gets a little strange in the fall of 1887 when he is assigned to handle the late Henry Winchester's estate and his client's distractingly handsome grandson arrives to take up residence in the old manor house. As an unlikely friendship (with a side of pining) develops, the house slowly coughs up its secrets and reveals a whole world of trouble that Dean never knew his grandfather kept hidden.</p><p>Includes artwork!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The House on Eden Hill

 

             Filmy light filtered through the coach’s rattling window as it trundled along a long, crooked byway. Castiel squinted at the heavily blotted sheet of paper in his hand, holding it up to the small square of daylight and sighing once again over the ragged scribbling of one “Mr. Dean C. Winchester”—a man evidently in sore need of a secretary or at least some remedial penmanship lessons. For the life of him, Castiel couldn’t make out whether Mr. Winchester had indicated he would arrive on the 16th or the 18th of September—though it did not, in the end, make much difference. It was the 23rd of the month, and Dean Winchester had yet to show his face in town.

             So Castiel had set out from Lowell into the Massachusetts countryside without the benefit of his presence that Friday morning. _Henry_ Winchester had, after all, been the one to hire the Adler  & Milton firm to act as executors of his estate, and the matter required attention whether the client’s estranged grandson deigned to come take a look at his rather sizeable inheritance or not.

             Stocks and bonds and capital amounting to a modest fortune. Several enviable tracts of land lush with grape arbors. And a colonial-era manor apparently just as lush with rare books and artifacts. Dean Winchester’s coarse hand and straight-shooting vernacular suggested he had not, perhaps, inherited the academic bent of his grandfather, but surely any man of sense would care to lay hands on the money, at least? Castiel shook his head, tucking the letter in with the rest of his files. This Dean would turn up sooner or later and it could only benefit Castiel to have things well in order by the time he did.

             He’d been told in all manner of couched terms that his interpersonal skills were underdeveloped for a lawyer. He didn’t like speaking off the cuff. He didn’t like unforeseen developments. He would never make a great courtroom speaker. Yet the black-and-white rigors of the law had appealed to him at school while the softer humanities frequently dodged his understanding. And when Zachariah Adler, Castiel’s first cousin once removed, had offered him a guaranteed seat in his practice if he chose to pursue a law degree, Castiel had taken to the challenge like a soldier to a drill. It had been a goal, a plan. It had felt like success.

             As the carriage thundered through the narrow darkness of a covered bridge and made a turn out of the trees, Castiel slid the windowpane open and peered ahead to see a vast gray pasture speckled with sheep and, in the distance, a hill crowned by the misty outline of a house.

             Well, thank God for that. His head ached from trying to read in the rocking dimness of the coach and his legs were in bad want of a stretch. He closed the window and his eyes until he felt the horses halt. The driver tapped the butt of his whip against the roof.

             “Eden Hill, sir,” he called.

             “Yes, thank you, Tom,” Castiel tried not to groan, throwing open the door and stepping down into the wet gravel.

             The manor had looked a good deal more welcoming from afar.

             Up close and personal now, Castiel took in a forbidding sprawl of fastened shutters and spiny weeds. The brickwork looked in good enough repair, but the front door flaked white paint and ivy choked the chimneys—none of which gave off the fragrant smoke of warmth, cookery, or human habitation.

             Castiel strode up to knock at the door, concerned that the help had perhaps entirely abandoned the property. It has been his understanding that they were still in residence, and Castiel had himself corresponded with the butler shortly after Henry Winchester’s death.

             He waited a long thirty seconds and knocked again, this time with the side of his fist and an edge of annoyance. Another ten went by before he heard footsteps shuffling toward the door.

             “You must be the lawyer from town, then…” a skeletal fellow of at least sixty said without preamble upon hauling open the door. His suit looked fifteen years out of fashion and his shoes were scuffed in a manner not at all befitting a butler. He looked Castiel up and down without a shred of tact.

             “I am. Mr. Galliard, I presume?”

             The old butler nodded mechanically and ushered him in. “I have to tell you,” Castiel began, trying to keep his tone light, “I feared no one was at home at first. Have you been experiencing difficulty keeping on the others since Mr. Winchester passed? I’m certain he made provisions for the continuance of their pay until such time as the, uh, young Mr. Winchester arrives…?”

             “Others?” Galliard hooted, his eyes wide. “Oh, but it’s just been me and Sally for nigh on a decade, sir. Henry let the rest go after Millie—rest her soul—died back in ’78. Unless, of course, you count the boys from the next farm over who come by morning and evening to see about the barn chores. Henry did keep a pair of geldings for the buggy.”

             “I… see,” Castiel agreed warily. “Well, uh, might my driver water and rest his horses? I don’t expect to be here long.”

             “I suppose. Pull around back and you’ll find the barn just past those big oaks,” Galliard called to the coach, the door still standing wide.

             Tom tipped his hat and urged his team on, clattering around the side of the house.

             “Follow me, sir. You’ll want some coffee, no doubt, and Sally makes a mean brew.”

 

             It was indeed the strongest coffee Castiel had ever tasted.

             He sat in the late Henry Winchester’s chill, cobwebbed dining room, the table bare of any cloth while, by contrast, the great mirror over the sideboard seemed to have appropriated it, its long oval frame draped in lacy ivory.

             “Aren’t the mirrors of the household usually only covered during the wake?” Castiel observed. “Mr. Winchester’s funeral has, I know, come and gone now.”

             “Oh, those are nothing new, Mr. Milton,” the cook supplied, still standing over him with the coffee carafe in a most disagreeable way. “Henry’s had them shrouded for years. Couldn’t abide a mirror.”

             “Then why didn’t you simply… remove all the mirrors?” Castiel asked with a polite little cough, taking another sip from his bitter black cup.

             Sally and Galliard exchanged a look that made Castiel swiftly reconsider this line of inquiry. He was beginning to suspect that Henry Winchester had fallen victim to that all-too-common fashion among wealthy New England recluses of becoming “eccentric” in his old age.

             “Well. Um, perhaps you’d like to show me the rest of the house? I’m here for an overview of its condition as well as the approximate value of its contents. I understand that the deceased kept a large library as well as some… historical curiosities?”

             “You could say that,” Galliard allowed.

             “Do you know how much the collection might be worth? I’d like to give his grandson a reasonably accurate tally of his inheritance before calling in an appraiser.”

             “Oh, Henry always said all that bric-a-brac in the Green Parlor was without price,” Sally sighed.

             “The Green Parlor?”

             “Yes, on account of the wallpaper? The front parlor was for company—not that we’ve ever seen much of that—and the Green Parlor was for Henry’s things. Kept it under lock and key.”

             “You… have the key now, I hope?” Castiel asked, eyebrow raised.

             “I do,” Galliard confirmed.

             “Then let’s go see, shall we?” He stood rather too quickly, eager to be out from under Sally’s unnervingly maternal scrutiny. Galliard obligingly led the way.

             The corridors of the house stretched away into faded, olive-green gloom. Dust motes swam in the thick air like flecks of microscopic detritus adrift in some ancient briny sea. As he peered into each shadowed room, Castiel half expected to see a lantern fish or terrible eel (or less earthly monsters still) glide past through the soupy atmosphere and take a bite of something.

             They had to pass through the library to reach the Green Parlor, and there Castiel paused.

             Shakespeare and Marlowe. Shelley and Byron. Exquisite, well-worn editions of a hundred dark classics alongside a set of law books that could have been the pride and joy of any Harvard professor’s office. Castiel spotted several illuminated manuscripts sitting in their own special alcove, including a frankly breathtaking Bible, its pages edged in silver leaf. “Fourteenth century?” he wondered aloud, trying to make out the cramped medieval writing.

             “I wouldn’t know, sir. Had my schooling through age 12, but most of Mr. Winchester’s books were beyond me. Sally and I borrowed Dickens from that front corner on rainy days, but I didn’t ask about the rest.”

             And, wandering past those first reasonable ranks of _Doctor Faustus_ and _Frankenstein_ , Castiel was beginning to see why. Crumbling tomes in French, High German, and Latin, Latin, _Latin_ filled the cases. The titles confounded him. _Malleus Maleficarum_. _Demonology_. _Monas Hieroglyphica_. The leather bindings were stamped with occult symbols, runes, and the unsavory names of a dozen pagan deities. Castiel plucked one slender volume from the shelf to find what appeared to be the diary of a madwoman, her accounts of visions and Hell-fiends dissolving into tear-spattered rants by the end of each page.

             “Dear God,” Castiel whispered, slipping it back in place. It was not what he’d imagined when he’d heard his client kept rare books. “Let’s, uh, let’s see these artifacts, too….” He supposed it was too much to hope at this point that the collection consisted of your garden variety Ming vases and antique clocks.

             Sure enough, the Green Parlor teemed with abominations.

             Scimitars and spearheads hung all about with ugly amulets and lengths of chain. Open cabinets held pungent incenses and flasks of spring water from a hundred sacred sites around the world. Rusty rosaries lay coiled at the bottom of the flasks as often as not, looking like nothing so much as skinned snakes. Meanwhile, the incongruity of the mint green floral pattern twining up the wallpaper made Castiel feel a little ill—an inclination not at all helped by the distinctly bloody-looking vials scattered across an end table.

             “Well, I’m sure some of these things are valuable,” he gulped, licking his chapped lips and finding himself more eager than ever to leave. He could be glad, however, that he had come early and alone. Now he would have the opportunity to forewarn Dean Winchester of the house’s less-than-desirable character before he stumbled straight into it unawares.

             They made rounds of the upper chambers and attic, Castiel silently relieved to find the roof seemingly leak-free and the bedrooms spacious and ordinary, if musty. The root cellar had a well, a thinly-stocked wine rack, and a packed dirt floor. Spidery and labyrinthine, it nevertheless seemed dry.

             “Now, are the vineyards all leased out to tenant farmers?” Castiel asked as they stumped back up the stairs to the kitchen.

             “All except the small plot by the barn. It’s gone a bit wild, but Henry did like to sit and read there,” Sally said, appearing from the pantry.

             “And those sheep grazing—you’ve got people paying for the use of the pasture?”

             “We do. All the agreements are in Henry’s desk.”

             “Excellent. Well, I’m sure the young Mr. Winchester will maintain the status quo with all that, at least in the beginning. He’s coming in from New Orleans and has never, as I understand it, owned or managed any land before.”

             “And he’ll… ‘keep the status quo’ with us, you think?” Sally hinted, pushing a wisp of gray hair out of her eyes.

             It was a presumptuous question and Castiel bristled at it. He could make no promises on behalf of someone he’d never met. A man’s taste in servants was a deeply personal matter, after all. Dean might like to bring in some Louisiana Creole cook with him. He might prefer a younger, more personable butler. He might want to host dances and hunts and picnics far beyond what these leftover domestics could manage.

             “I’m afraid I have no idea. But I can tell you that Henry Winchester’s will indicated you should both receive a very generous stipend regardless of whether his heir chooses to retain you.”

             “Oh, bless him!” Sally exclaimed, showing her teeth in what Castiel supposed was a smile.

             “Indeed. It will all be settled soon enough. Now I need to be getting back to Lowell.” Castiel seized his hat from the rack by the door, more than ready to depart for the familiar confines of his Adler & Milton office. It smelled perpetually of wood polish and paper, and the maple outside the townhouse window had just begun to turn the most soothing shade of gold. He would stop for a meal at his customary club first—roast beef and turnips today, he hoped—and maybe Zachariah would even leave him alone for the rest of the afternoon. Castiel simply longed for some peace and quiet after any sort of outing. Zachariah knew he hated calling at people’s homes but, as the senior partner, he could only afford to do so much of it himself. Castiel had to pull his weight with such things at least a few times a month.

             “We wish you a safe trip, Mr. Milton,” Galliard wheezed, showing him to the door. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

             “Yes, yes,” Castiel agreed absently, privately hoping otherwise. He would strive to settle the remainder of the estate from the safety of the city. A meeting or two with Dean Winchester and the rest conducted by mail. Yes, surely that would do. Zachariah didn’t expect him to become bosom friends with every client, did he?

             Castiel stepped out the door into the bracing early autumn air and turned for the barn.

             But he’d barely taken ten steps when a rhythmic drumming of hooves made him stop and look about for the source. A few seconds later, a solitary rider came surging up the hill at a long, loping canter, the tails of his coat whipping out behind. The horse’s blood bay coloring stood out from the murky gray of earth and sky like a war banner, its flanks and the rider’s oiled brown boots equally spattered with mud. Castiel staggered back a few steps, clutching his files to his chest as the man pulled up with a last-minute spin of the snorting Thoroughbred and zeroed in on Castiel with all the eager curiosity of a dog spotting a new plaything.

             He held the reins in one bare hand, the other coming up to tug at his collar. He sat light in the saddle for a large man, his clothing practical and travel-stained. But his _face_. An almost alarming contrast of traditionally masculine and feminine features graced his flushed, freckled face. The bright, round eyes and bowed pout of a doll sat smack-dab in the middle of square-jawed scruff.

             He was, without a doubt, one of the most effortlessly handsome men Castiel had ever seen.

 

             “Hey there,” the rider said with a faint quirk of his lips. “Dean Winchester. Don’t tell me you’re Milton?”

             “Cas—Castiel Milton,” he stammered back, swiftly processing and filing away the man’s startling beauty. He needn’t trouble himself with it. “Official executor of your grandfather’s estate. I had no idea you had made it into town today, Mr. Winchester. I assure you I would have waited to make the trip—”

             “Don’t worry about it. Damn train delays. Anyway, your man back in Lowell—bald? ghoulish eyes? Adler? He said I’d find you here and I might as well try to catch up,” Dean explained, alighting from the horse with practiced ease. He began to walk the sweating animal up and down the drive himself, stroking its neck.

             “I’m sure my driver, Tom, can take him for a cool down,” Castiel offered, chasing after Dean’s long, bowlegged stride.

             “Oh, that’d be great. Sorry, I’m used to doing all this myself,” Dean offered with a crooked smile.

             They walked together to the barn, a slightly ramshackle, whitewashed structure with a walled and cobbled yard. They turned over the still prancing bay to Tom’s rather surprised care and only then did Dean really seem to take note of where he was.

             “This is some house, isn’t it? Doesn’t seem right that it’s mine.” He pinched a small bunch of dusty blue grapes from a nearby vine and tasted them.

             “It’s a good size, yes. And what you see here can be easily improved upon with a bit of paint and grounds work,” Castiel said, relieved Dean didn’t seem immediately put off by the rough state of things. “Though I must warn you that the interior is quite out-of-date and… unorthodox.”

             “Well, it belonged to an 84-year-old widower.” Dean shrugged, pushing another ripe grape between his lips. “I’m not worried about a few ugly armchairs.”

             “I’m afraid it’s a bit more than that.”

             “Yeah? Well, I know grandpa Winchester was an odd duck,” Dean admitted ruefully. “My father had a falling out with him over some of his stranger beliefs and left home when he was seventeen.”

             “I see… there was no contact at all, then, between Henry and John?”

             “Not that I know of. Sam and I were born in Kansas Territory, and we lived there until my mother died. Dad took us all over after that, but never to Massachusetts. I never saw a letter, never heard any news. Dad mentioned he’d grown up in a real big old house, of course, but I didn’t imagine anything like _this_. I wonder what he woulda done if he’d lived a few more years to inherit it?” Dean paused and snorted as if remembering something. “Probably woulda used your letter for fire-starting and let the place rot. He was stubborn like that.”

             “That would’ve been a shame. It’s a wonderful location. Good place to… raise a family,” Castiel said, the words sounding foreign in his mouth. That’s what people did, after all, wasn’t it? Wedded nice girls, fleshed out the world with children? The idea had always swamped the pit of his own stomach with dread, but the rest of society certainly seemed happy enough with it.

             Dean shot him a slightly puzzled look. “I’m not married.”

             Castiel merely nodded, unsure what else to say. Someone like Dean Winchester _would_ marry, of course.

             “You were getting ready to leave, weren’t you?” Dean pointed out, startling Castiel back to the present moment. “You don’t have to stay on my account if you’ve got somewhere better to be.”

             Castiel had the roast beef and the maple tree and a nice, calming stack of affidavits to prepare. If, ten minutes earlier, someone had told him he would miss out on those things due to the unannounced arrival of his missing client, he would have withered in despair. The house on Eden Hill had left him feeling nothing but cold and anxious—and yet here Dean was offering an escape Castiel suddenly didn’t care to take.

             “No, I can stay,” he said hesitantly.

             “Great.” Dean grinned, holding out the hand with the grapes. “You want one? They’re pretty good. Better in a jelly though. Or _pie_. I hear grape pie’s something people do around here.”

             Castiel surprised himself by accepting, the earthy, candied sweetness of the fruit hitting his tongue like a spoonful of sin itself.

 

             Dean laughed at the horrors of the Green Parlor.

             He shrugged off the unprofessional familiarity of Francis Galliard and Sally Black as though it were nothing at all. He chose which bedroom he wanted—going so far as to test out the lumpy feather mattress—and didn’t even bat an eye at the eerily swathed mirrors. He talked aloud about possible renovations and repurposing of space, throwing open windows to the cool breeze of the outdoors as he went.

             And Castiel regarded him the whole while with an almost morbid fascination.

             The charms of women had never tempted Castiel. Which was not to say he didn’t like women. He liked their laughter and their wisdom and their gentle manners. Sometimes he could see how pretty they were. But pretty like the seashore. Pretty like a sunbathing cat. Pretty like a new book. He no more physically desired them than he desired any of those things. Sometimes he imagined that, if he absolutely must, he might take a wife as a friend and confidant. Perhaps he could get accustomed to her closeness, her scent, her moods—even sleep next to her—without ever needing to touch her? But then the old unease came tumbling back. Such an arrangement would not be fair. Not unless she felt the same. Better to remain a loveless bachelor than become a loveless husband.

             Learning that some men took to bed with other men had sparked a revelatory conflict in the young Castiel. On the one hand, the idea appealed to him like nothing else had before. The mental image of curling up with another boy and kissing him made Castiel feel flustered in a good way. Yet, on the other hand, he knew no boys with whom he actually wanted such intimacy. He grew up and read about ancient Greek lovers, overheard bawdy talk of _sodomy_ and _cocksucking_ , even got his hands on a book of erotic drawings once… but still he considered it all with a profound sense of distance. While at college, he’d made the brief acquaintance of a seedy English fellow named Crowley who’d guessed his predilections and, with an air of great generosity, offered to introduce him to the relevant social circles. Castiel had declined in a fit of anxiety, successfully avoided Crowley for months, and banished any lustful thought for even longer.

             Now, at thirty years old, he’d long since accepted that he didn’t belong to that world. He simply didn’t have the proverbial needs of everyone else. He’d looked, for a time, to religion and the dignity associated with celibacy… but even that had not fully resonated with him. Religion tended to frame it as a sacrifice (which, to Castiel, it was not) and, simultaneously, a morally superior lifestyle (which, to Castiel, it was not). He could not consider his occasional longings and daydreams wrong. He could not consider other people disgraceful for enjoying their bodies. But neither did he think _he_ could enjoy their bodies.

             The most Castiel ever did was lie awake some few nights—usually raw spring nights when the earth seemed to be straining to life right outside his window—and think about lithe hands and trembling thighs while palming himself to release. It felt good. In the morning, he would wake to no one’s company but the birds’. And it would never be otherwise.

             Except Dean Winchester—this brash, casual ruffian who didn’t even know the difference between a soup spoon and a dessert spoon, Castiel noted as they finally sat down to dinner—had somehow gotten under his skin just like a spring night.

             His hands were broad, calloused, and studded with a couple of plain rings. His thighs were wide-set and looked like they could take their owner for a headlong sprint at any moment. They bore precious little resemblance to the limbs of the warm, anonymous form he’d always conjured up before, yet Castiel found himself studying the man before him now like a Michelangelo sculpture. He focused on the very veins in Dean’s wrists, imagined the fine dusting of hair on his legs. He smelled like damp wool and leaves and horse _,_ and though scent had never been a consideration in any of Castiel’s reveries, he suddenly realized how it might make all the difference.

             It was all terribly distracting. Whyever had he stayed? He needed to get away from Dean Winchester before he made a complete fool of himself.

             But not yet. There was leek soup, boiled potatoes, and a rather chewy cod still to eat. Trial by dinner. Castiel found himself merely rearranging his fish while Dean wolfed down the food like a farmhand and picked his teeth after. The new head of house heartily approved of Sally’s gut-melting coffee and didn’t mind in the least that the strawberry rhubarb tart was leftover from the day before. He had arrived unannounced, after all.

             “So… what took you to New Orleans, Mr. Winchester?” Castiel wondered aloud over dessert.

             “Call me Dean. You’re making me feel old and rich with all this ‘Mr. Winchester’ business. Not sure I’m ready for it yet.” Dean took another long draft of coffee. “As for New Orleans, it was a friend of mine named Lafitte. Benjamin Lafitte. We met out west. He was fur trapping and I was just screwing around. Seeing the wide world of cattle trails and gold mines.”

             “You just… traveled?” Castiel asked, taken aback. “How did you make a living?”

             “Hustled cards and pool, mostly,” Dean smirked. “Took odd jobs. You don’t need a lot of money when it’s just you and the Rocky Mountains.”

             “I admit, that's incredible to me. The furthest I’ve ever been from home is Philadelphia. Tell me about it?”

             Dean did. He told Castiel about the rushing streams and frosted brush of the mountains, the buffalo skulls and locusts of the plains, the red buttes and endless sun of the deserts. A tough black mare had carried him through it all, but he’d regretfully sold her to a man in Texas when he decided to follow Benny back to civilization. Not that there hadn’t been civilization in the west. There were forts and camps and one-horse-towns. Saloons and strange women. But Benny had made a mint on pelts and come to miss his old bayou home. Dean had been happy enough to go along.

             “But you must have met plenty of people moving around like that,” Castiel pointed out. “You dropped everything for this man?”

             “Well, uh, what can I say?” Dean chuckled drily, scratching the back of his head with one rough hand. “Sometimes you just meet somebody who’s… easy to be around.”

             Castiel scowled, less than convinced. His sister Anna— _she_ was easy to be around. Most other people, no.

             “But, see, Benny met this woman on a riverboat cruise we went on a few months back. They’re getting married now. Can’t say I blame him—she’s a hell of a lady and an heiress to boot. But I was starting to see I didn’t have much of a place there anymore. When I got your letter about all this it seemed like a sign.”

             “It doesn’t bother you not knowing anyone here?”

             “Nope. Besides, now I know you, right?”

             Castiel cleared his throat and busied himself refolding his napkin.

             “Honestly, I think I’m gonna like Massachusetts,” Dean was saying around one last mouthful of tart. “Too damn hot down south. I’ll take these spooky fall nights over yellow fever any day.”

             “Speaking of spooky,” Castiel intimated, finally latching onto his chance to broach the subject. “Don’t you find this house a bit… disturbing?”

             Dean waved his fork dismissively, but his face had split into a playful grin all the same. “Disturbing? Shit, every damn building in New Orleans was haunted—or so I was told. You build up a tolerance for it. Yeah, my grandpa evidently took his taste in decorating straight from Poe, but it’s nothing I can’t fix with some more lamps and a pool table. Oh, and a _party_. Give me a few weeks with this place, Castiel, and then I’m gonna show you a party you won’t forget.”

 

* * *

 

             Castiel never actually expected to be invited to a party at Eden Hill. He returned to Lowell and the rest of his quiet, predictable life late that September afternoon knowing that Dean Winchester had relished his company not because he was special, but because he was there. Dean was clearly the kind of man who liked some friendly banter over dinner and Castiel had been at hand—nothing more.

             They met a couple more times at Castiel’s office as all the pesky details of Henry’s estate were settled and once when Dean stopped by to ask Zachariah for a recommendation on contractors. Unfortunately, he’d only grown more interesting each time they’d met. Dean always showed up at Adler & Milton clean-shaven and dressed in a small array of new suits, his affable presence seeming to brighten every corner of the neat, colorless townhouse. He joked with Zachariah and the ink-stained clerks equally. Castiel noticed that his eyes were green and that he never wore gloves even when the days grew cool. He liked horses and sweet things and the loudest of brass bands.

             But Castiel had seen no more of him after that and assumed their acquaintance had reached its natural expiration date. Probably for the best, he told himself.

             And then, just when the sound of Dean’s voice and the shadow of his smile had begun to fade, Castiel received a small gray envelope in the mail. An envelope from Eden Hill.

             He opened it to find a standard dinner party invitation for Saturday the 29th scratched out with rather forced care in Dean's blocky hand. A less tidy postscript read _Cas—Come see what I’ve done with the place_.

             Cas. He’d called him Cas. Only Anna and his long-dispersed childhood friends had ever called him that.

             But Dean was given to excessive familiarity in that way. He called Zachariah “Zach,” after all. It didn’t mean anything. Nor, necessarily, did the personal addendum. If anything, Castiel reasoned, it made the invite that much _less_ personal. Dean was inviting him to see how well he’d handled his unwieldy inheritance. Certainly not necessary, but within the bounds of Castiel’s professional interest. Dean probably expected him to stay for dinner but politely excuse himself before the cigars and poker and real fellowship broke out. A thank-you for his help with the estate. That was all.

             Nevertheless, when the morning of the 29th dawned, Castiel found he could hardly eat, focusing instead on grooming himself with a vigor usually reserved exclusively for holidays. He even dabbed his neck with the teaflower and bergamot cologne Anna had bought for him on her last trip to New York—and immediately regretted it, suddenly convinced he smelled like a boy at his first dance trying to cover nervous sweat with his mother’s perfume. When he stepped into Tom’s coach an hour later he was still scrubbing at himself with his handkerchief.

             The sky glowered the whole trip north out of Lowell. Ripe purple clouds tumbled over one another, revealing flashes of vivid October sky only to threaten rain again the next moment. The majority of the trees stood stripped by the wind, but lacy mantles of scarlet and yellow still fringed some branches they passed.

             Against his usual custom, Castiel spent the entire ride with the window open to the spicy sweet air, the day unseasonably moderate despite its tempestuous posturing. He let his head loll against the worn seat cushion and lost all sense of the day, imagining himself traversing other roads in other times. Perhaps he went to Washington Irving’s Sleepy Hollow. Or Nathaniel Hawthorne’s primitive Boston. Or someplace further still. Camelot. Utopia. The trees didn’t know or care. They could have populated any of those lands. Only Tom’s tuneless whistling occasionally startled Castiel from his thoughts.

             Castiel usually preferred histories and biographies. Books of science and weight. Newspapers and business journals. He eschewed most popular novels, finding them overblown and unrealistic. But the sheer gothic romance of his surroundings had stirred his blood much as some _other_ things lately had. Castiel let it wash over him like a spell.

             When they finally came into sight of Eden Hill, Castiel saw exactly how busy Dean had been.

             The brick had been scrubbed of its mildewed streaks, the door and windowframes glossed over in fresh, leaden white. The gravel had been dragged to eliminate potholes, and some low yew plantings softened up the front of the house—which glowed all about with light and activity. Another carriage had just pulled up, two young women in matching emerald green disembarking with smiles and a dainty sprint to the door. Castiel could hear the nickering calls of dozens of horses echoing down the drive from the barn. He wondered how many people Dean had managed to meet in his short month of residence?

             That question was quickly answered by the sultry heat of a score of guests packed into the front parlor. Dean stood to greet them all in the archway, kissing hands and winking liberally.

             “Castiel!” he called immediately upon his entrance, striding forward to grip his hand. “I’m glad you could make it!” He stopped, an unreadable look flitting over his face. “Nice cologne you’ve got there.”

             Castiel froze, unsure how Dean meant it. Not for the first time that day he cursed the little flask of scent. “Oh, bother. Is it too strong?”

             “Nah, it’s classy as hell is what it is," Dean laughed, smiling like the dawn and just about making Castiel want to melt right into his waiting hand. He took an involuntary half-step closer.

             But then Dean was releasing his grip, turning aside to check his pocket watch. “Hey, make sure you come on the tour I'm gonna give soon. You’ll be the only one who can appreciate the differences.”

             “Have you had no visitors until now?” Castiel inquired, fumbling to regain his composure.

             “Nobody but workmen. This is the housewarming, if you will."

             “How have you made so many friends?” Castiel asked, raising his voice over the tinkle of glassware and giggles in the parlor.

             “Oh, got myself invited to the neighbors’. Joined a club in Lowell. Went to the theater.” Dean shrugged as though it all amounted to nothing. “See those blondes in green? Twins. They’re _actresses_.”

             He said it quietly, conspiratorially, as though this was supposed to mean something to Castiel. Castiel merely nodded, eyes wide. “How… interesting,” he gulped.

             “You bet. Get in there. Have a refreshment.” Dean clapped him on the shoulder and moved to greet another new arrival.

             Castiel helped himself to a tiny glass of hard cider punch and swiftly retreated to the piano bench, the better to get out of everyone’s way. He watched the shifting current of pleasantries and flirtations occurring in the room and realized almost immediately that not a single guest appeared to be married. Castiel wondered at the brazenness of so many ladies attending a party alone, without even a relative or chaperone, but Dean clearly ran with a different sort of people and Castiel would never dare comment on it aloud. Everyone seemed very comfortable. And—perhaps—this step outside his usual circle would prove good for Castiel.

             “It’s not tuned,” a voice pointed out over his right shoulder.

             Castiel jumped, looking around. A redheaded woman of his own approximate age leaned nonchalantly against the wall, paper fan flapping against the stuffiness of the room. She wore a dark burgundy gown that somehow did not clash with her hair. “The piano? I tried it earlier. It’s not tuned.”

             “Oh!” Castiel exclaimed. “That’s all right. I don’t play.”

             “I do, after a fashion. My mother insisted. Celeste Middleton.” She snapped the fan closed and extended her hand.

             “Castiel Milton,” he replied, standing and taking her long fingers in his.

             “What a fascinating name! Like something out of a story,” she said with a toothy smile that gave every appearance of being genuine.

             “Thank you. People don’t often say so. It’s a version of _Cassiel_ —which is, in itself, a rather obscure name. An angel in some texts. The angel of solitude and temperance. Non-interference.”

             “Well, that doesn’t sound very enjoyable!” Celeste snorted with a pleasant smirk. “Myself, I’m all about interference. In every sense of the word.”

             Castiel had, here and there, heard the phrase “interfering with oneself” to reference the kind of sexual touching in which he so rarely indulged personally. But he couldn’t believe a nice lady like Celeste meant to suggest that. She couldn’t possibly know what she’d said.

             “Where, uh, where did you meet our Mr. Winchester?” he asked, quickly changing tack.

             “Oh, at work.”

             “Work?” Castiel repeated blankly. “Where is it that you... work?”

             “At the local chapter of the Society for Women’s Rights? I’m an insufferable suffragette, I’m afraid. Dean came in to make a donation.”

             “Middleton… oh! Celeste Middleton!” He knew the name now, of course. People were forever going on about _Celeste Middleton_. She’d been arrested three times—twice for unlawful demonstrations and once for actually attempting to cast a ballot in the 1884 presidential election—and was rumored to keep the more-than-friendly company of other spinsters. Anna, to her husband’s distress, had attended some of her speeches and conventions.

             “Don’t fret now. I don’t bite,” she said with a slightly bashful roll of her eyes.

             “I wouldn’t—I don’t—that is to say I have nothing against your mission. Absolutely nothing,” Castiel stammered.

             “Good to know. I don’t think Dean invited anyone who would.”

             “He’s… interested in women’s rights, is he?” Castiel wondered, faintly surprised.

             “Well,” Celeste mused. “Not in the academic sense. I’d be surprised if he’d read any of the literature. But he said he liked my 'gumption'. Said he’d spent too much time on the frontier seeing women handle the worst sorts of things to think their opinions meant any less. And he doesn’t like pointless rules. You can see that.”

             She nodded to wear Dean had finally entered the room proper, an arm around each of the twin actresses.

             “He does have good taste, anyway,” Celeste observed, taking a long, appreciative sip of her cider while watching the slightly plumper twin’s bosom rise and fall in a musical laugh.

             Castiel gaped at her, blushing.

             “Oh, don’t get all puritanical now,” Celeste scolded, swatting him with her fan.

             “I’m not,” Castiel assured her quickly. “I’m just—I’m just not used to this.”

             “No? You will be soon enough if we have anything to say about it.”

              Castiel felt a twinge of defensiveness. There was nothing wrong with the way he’d lived his life. He was not a child. But he didn’t know what to say and he felt his ears growing hotter.

              “Oh dear,” Celeste sighed, her face crumpling. “I’m sorry if I’ve struck some nerve. You’ll find I do have a way of putting my foot in my mouth.”

              “It’s all right—”

              But Dean chose that moment to insist everyone follow him for a look at the grounds and the rest of the house. Castiel was swept along with the rest to see the freshly pruned vineyard and bridle path—only to be driven back indoors in a cheerful stampede as fat, spattering drops began to fall from the heavens almost immediately. Dean took the interruption in stride, showing them instead through an office, a lounge, the library and, lastly, the Green Parlor, which he’d left nearly intact except to tidy away the clutter.

              They all exclaimed in delight at Henry Winchester’s macabre collection of saints’ relics, inscribed sickles—even a mummified hand. And Castiel had to admit that it had all taken on a wholly different character with the house so warm and crowded. Curious and amusing even as an autumn squall complete with rumbling thunder churned outside. He felt silly for ever having been disturbed by the place.

              Celeste had just taken up a tasseled saber and challenged some gentleman or other to a mock duel when Dean heard the toll of the clock and announced dinner should be ready. They trooped off to the dining room in the most informal way imaginable, sitting without assignments at the vastly extended table.

              Either Dean had hired additional kitchen help or Sally had gotten a new lease on life, because the food was excellent. Lamb in a piquant parsley sauce, butternut squash soufflé, and a free flow of red wine all followed by pumpkin pie—which eminently suited the season. It was hardly the most elaborate dinner party Dean could have thrown, but it felt all the more intimate for the fewer courses and haphazard seating. Dean called down to people three and four chairs away, and Castiel swore he saw two women eating off the same dessert plate. He felt both lost and a little giddy among these people. In deference to his nerves, he found he drank more than he'd planned to.

              Something about their collective worldly mien made Castiel wonder if they could all see right through him. If they could all see the way he didn’t fawn over the women but perked up to high alert every time Dean addressed him. After all, Crowley had somehow been able to tell, all those years ago. But Crowley had been a consummate snake. Castiel hadn’t trusted him in the least. His fear of exposure still simmered beneath the surface, but not as it had with the sneering Englishman. He might shrink from their eyes and judgment… but he did not have the sense that anyone there would go out of their way to hurt him.

              Castiel was just looking up at the great oval mirror above the sideboard, its silver-chased frame now free of its draped cloth, when he saw a woman in a cornsilk green dress enter the room. She swayed and clawed at the wall as if drunk, her hair slumped over her face, her fingers gnarled and shaking. Alarmed, Castiel turned over his shoulder but saw that all the ladies were still seated. And none wore green except the blonde twins in their much deeper shade of emerald. He blinked and turned back to his pie. The wine must have gotten to _him_ more than he realized.

              When Dean finally roused everyone from the table, Castiel made every attempt to draw the host aside and tender his farewell excuses yet somehow found himself asking another question entirely: “Dean, is there someone else here? Besides those at dinner? Another woman?”

              Dean blinked at him quizzically but replied with, “Well, there’s the new maid, but I’m sure she’s in her quarters.”

              “She wouldn’t have cause to wear a green gown, would she? A pale green gown?”

              “Her working dresses are black,” Dean said with a shrug. “Why?”

              “It’s nothing. Just the mirror playing tricks on me, I suppose.”

              “The mirror, huh? Careful, sounds like you’re taking after Grandpa Henry,” Dean said wryly. “C'mon, quit looking for invisible people and go talk to the live ones.”

 

              The evening progressed with surprising speed after that. Dean pointedly failed to dismiss the ladies to their own room after the meal but carried on gambling and quaffing cognac with them right there in the lounge. Talk grew looser as the hours passed and Castiel suspected a few urgent kisses had been exchanged in the hallway, but everyone eventually called for their coaches in good humor, none apparently having been pressed in any way they had not already desired.

              The storm had eased, stopped, and then started again by the time carriages began to pull away from the house. The drivers lit their lanterns and donned their oil slicks, but nothing much about the night seemed to warrant real alarm.

             Tom, however, had to be woken from a heavy slumber in the hayloft before Castiel could depart and by then all the other coaches were all fifteen minutes gone. Castiel hoped he’d not overstayed his welcome as he toe-tapped impatiently in the entrance hall, relieved to finally see the black coach come wobbling out of the even blacker night. He dashed out into the now torrential rain with a final thank-you to Dean and slammed the carriage door behind him. It would be a long, damp ride back home. He watched the amber lights of Eden Hill dissolve into the wall of rain behind them and then sat back with a sigh.

             His head swam with too many kinds of alcohol and he had just started to fall into a slack-jawed doze when he felt the coach wheels sliding rather than rolling.

             It was a sickening sensation, and Castiel sat bolt upright. Over the downpour, he heard Tom cursing and the horses clattering about trying to find some purchase with their heavily shod hooves. They managed to halt several long seconds later at the bottom of a shallow incline, and Castiel figured that was the end of it.

             Except the coach did not move forward. It rocked sideways with the weight of Tom shimmying down from the box. A few moments later, he was banging at the door with his fist.

             “What’s happened?” Castiel shouted, sliding open the window and leaning back from the spray.

             “Road’s washed clean out!” Tom answered. “Powerful surge of water just here, sir.”

             “But the others must’ve passed this way only a little while ago!”

             “They call ‘em flash floods for a reason, sir—if you don’t mind my saying so. I’m telling you that stream yonder’s busted its banks!”

             “Well, I suppose we must go back unless it recedes just as quickly.”

             “Probably peter out soon enough, but I wouldn’t trust that covered bridge up ahead, least not in the dark! Very likely damaged now.”

             It was true. Castiel remembered the quaint timber-truss bridge—thirty years old at least—and imagined debris and dead logs from the swollen stream slamming into its struts. All reason dictated it would have to be assessed by light of day before risking a crossing.

             “Very well. Turn us around, Tom. We’ll have to impose on Mr. Winchester’s hospitality for the night.”

             Tom hand-led the horses to maneuver a tight turn back up the slick hill and then clambered back up to his seat for the short jog back to the house.

             When Castiel knocked, Galliard answered, his face stony and blank as a gargoyle’s. Castiel dripped on the entryway rug while hurriedly explaining himself.

             “Think nothing of it, Mr. Milton,” Galliard assured him. “We can’t have you getting swept halfway down to the Merrimack, can we? I’ll fetch Mr. Winchester.”

             Dean appeared a minute or two later, pounding down the main staircase in only his shirtsleeves now. “Cas! Long time no see!”

              Castiel laughed despite himself, shrugging bashfully.

              “I was about to turn in, but come upstairs and we’ll find you a dry nightshirt. I told Galliard to make sure your driver gets a place in the servants’ quarters, too. Damned nuisance of a storm. Sally just told me the bleeding _well’s_ overflowing into the cellar, and now this!”

              “Oh dear,” Castiel lamented as he trudged up the stairs beside Dean. “Does the well do that often? It’s bound to weaken the foundation over time.”

              “Never has before, according to her. But I was going to have paving stones put in down there on Monday anyhow. It's all scheduled. I guess I’ll just be paying them more to deal with the mud now.” He sighed. “I tell you, home ownership is a constant battle. You got a house, Cas?”

              “I’m afraid not. I lease a small suite of rooms in a boarding house. It’s all I need. And the landlady—Mrs. Harvelle—does breakfast and supper. She’s taken good care of me for several years now. A widow, you see.”

              Dean chuckled and elbowed Castiel in the side. “You sly dog.”

              “Pardon me?” Castiel asked, startled.

              “A _widow_. Your _landlady_. Taking _good care of you_. Sounds like the beginning to a story I’ve read in a certain underground magazine one or two hundred times.”

              “Oh! No, no, please don’t think that,” Castiel floundered, catching onto exactly what Dean was implying. “She’s like an aunt to me.”

              “Really? No spice in your life at all, Cas?” Dean turned to look at him, his smile unfazed. “Don’t you reckon you deserve some?”

              Castiel gulped uncomfortably. Dean was regarding him with unwavering eyes and that strange little smile and Castiel suddenly felt as if he was being _tested_ in some way, prodded toward a confession of virginity or deviancy or—or _something_. He realized they had stopped outside the door to the bedroom Dean had chosen for himself on that first fateful day.

              The moment stretched out for some few seconds, but Castiel could unearth no clever answer, no flippant response to disperse the tension.

              Dean finally licked his lips and turned away. “So. I’ll grab you that nightshirt.” He ducked into his room and returned with a bundle of cloth. “Just lay your wet things out over a chair by the door and I’ll have someone see to them.”

              “Thank you,” Castiel managed as he followed Dean to the next room over.

              With a tip of the candle he carried, Dean lit the lamp in the guest room, casting a small globe of bronze light over a canopied bed and plush rug. “Well, I hope this’ll be all right. It’s not too cold, is it? Didn’t have the fires lit up here….”

              “I’ll be fine,” Castiel said truthfully. For October, it was not overly chilly. “And thank you again, Dean.”

              “Happy to help. Night,” Dean said with an uncharacteristically awkward little bow. He took his leave and closed the door behind him.

              Castiel stripped off his slightly sodden outer layers and immediately sunk down onto the edge of the bed, his breath coming in fast, short bursts.

              He didn’t think he’d imagined it. Dean’s small taunts had given way to an unexpected intensity for a moment there. An intensity that had revealed a crack in his always previously golden confidence. What had he expected Castiel to say? Why engage in suggestive raillery with his former _lawyer_? Perhaps Dean joked so with all his friends and had only been taken aback by Castiel’s stiff-necked confusion? Or maybe….

              No. Dean had spent half the night charming and whispering up all the ladies like a perfect cad. He clearly had no difficulty finding women attractive. In a way, it had been a comfort to Castiel. It was how he expected a man like Dean Winchester to behave. It reaffirmed the impossibility of him wanting Castiel himself and let Castiel breathe a little easier around him.

              But not now. Castiel gripped his knees and screwed his eyes shut, trying not to acknowledge the muffled sounds of Dean preparing for sleep next door. He heard a dresser drawer clunk shut. Footsteps. A creak of the bed.

              Castiel knew that he himself was not homely or even plain. He was tall—near as tall as Dean—richly complected, and had very blue eyes, though he had always strived not to think much of it. It was a mild curse to a man who desired no female attention. But could it have actually caught Dean’s insatiable eye?

              Why would a man who liked women well enough risk _any_ dalliance with another man? It was wholly illegal, after all—punishable by prison time and hard labor. Castiel knew Dean wasn’t stupid. He could not be ignorant of the dangers. Only a madman would come right out with a proposition that could in no time see him breaking rocks by day and sniffling in a reeking cell by night….

              All at once Castiel felt cold to his bones. The damp and distress must have finally caught up to him. He pulled off his remaining undergarments, slipped the soft white nightshirt over his head, and burrowed into the bed’s depths.

              The nightshirt smelled like Dean, he thought. Not the rough-and-ready outdoors version he had caught that first day, but the closer skin-scent of the man himself.

              Of course, that was absurd. Castiel must be imagining it. Imagining it like everything else. He fell asleep some time later quite certain that he had overreacted. And that the nightshirt simply smelled of soap.

 

* * *

 

              When Castiel woke, the storm had ceased, a mere pattering drip from the roof and trees outside all that remained of its lashing fury. He rubbed his eyes and sat up from the tangle of downy quilts, blinking.

              Castiel nearly choked on his own tongue a second later, scrambling backwards into the carved headboard as if confronted by a serpent at the foot of his bed.

              _The lady in green was there in the room with him_. Swathed in shadow and too large by half, she stared down at him and moved not at all.

              In fact—Castiel realized with an explosive release of breath—she could never move. Because she was a painting. A damn oil painting! The more than full-length frame was draped in watered silk of the just the same pale green as her gown, and it had looked for all the world like a doorway filled to the brim with some ghostly giantess.

              Castiel crept out of bed, his pounding heart no longer quite in his throat. He approached the painting with a kind of awe.

              She could not have been more than twenty, her fawn hair swept up in the chignon and short curls of eighty or ninety years earlier. She had a frighteningly timeless appeal, however, and Castiel suddenly recognized her without recognizing her.

              She looked just like Dean.

              Yes, her great green eyes, rosy lips, and cheekbones were all drawn finer than his, but they were without a doubt _his_. Castiel bent to peer at the tiny, tarnished plate screwed to the bottom of the frame.

              _Elizabeth Sykes Winchester_ , it read. _1801_.

              By the date, she was like to have been Henry’s mother. Dean’s great-grandmother.

              Castiel laughed at himself then, the sound jarring in the morning stillness. Surely he’d seen this painting before? On the day he’d surveyed the house with Galliard and then with Dean? He didn’t _remember_ it, per se, but he felt certain this was where his mind had sourced the image in the mirror at dinner. And the room had simply been too dark to see it when he’d gone to bed the night before. Nothing to worry about after all.

              Castiel cracked the bedroom door and peeked outside. His own eveningwear was nowhere to be found, but a pressed shirt, plain waistcoat, and deep blue hunting jacket lay atop a pair of flecked tan trousers on a bench outside. Woolen socks were bunched into a tall pair of boots.

              Not inappropriate for morning wear in the countryside—though they suggested some inclination toward outdoor pursuits.

              Castiel snatched them up, hoping no one would come upon him in the hallway with his bare, goosefleshed legs sticking out from the hem of the nightshirt. There had been no dressing gown in the wardrobe.

              He donned the unfamiliar clothes quickly, grateful in particular for the suspenders he found balled up in the trousers: Dean had a thicker waist than Castiel and he felt quite sure the pants would have fallen straight down without them. The jacket, too, was a little too large through the shoulders. But the boots proved surprisingly tight. Though his toes pinched cruelly, he could not begin to jam his heel in all the way. Thoroughly defeated, Castiel eventually padded down the corridor in the socks alone, reconciled to the fact that he would simply have to ask for his own shoes back, sufficiently dry now or not.

              He came upon the maid, a mousy, mottle-cheeked girl of eighteen or nineteen, polishing the banister. “Oh! Mr. Milton, yes?” she chirped in a pleasant Irish accent. “I’ve got your things ironed for when you’re ready to leave. Mr. Winchester left those for you in the meantime. He says he hopes you’ll join him for a ride this morning.”

              “A… a ride?” Castiel croaked back.

              “To see about the bridge, sir? And probably for a bit of sport, too. Mr. Winchester’s a real devil of a rider.”

              “Yes, I’ve seen,” Castiel said, his underarms suddenly prickling with sweat despite the coolness. “But, um… _the boots didn’t fit_ ,” he intimated to her in a loud whisper, wiggling his stocking toes on the carpet for emphasis.

              “Oh dear!” she exclaimed, glancing down. “You poor thing! Maybe the groom has some wellies you can use!” And with that she dashed off before Castiel could lodge a protest.

              He continued downstairs despite his embarrassment, finding Dean at breakfast.

              Glancing up from Thursday’s issue of the _Lowell Courier_ , Dean smiled over a forkful of eggs. “Hey, Cas. How’d you sleep?”

              “Oh, well enough,” Castiel said, shifting uncomfortably. He certainly didn't feel the need to let Dean know how a mere family heirloom and nearly scared him senseless, and Sally was drifting out from the kitchen already with another place setting. She produced toast and jelly, hash and coffee, and then paused to ask if he’d care for eggs too.

              “No, this is plenty,” he assured her, slipping into his chair.

              A couple of minutes later, the maid came trotting triumphantly in with a pair of scrubbed rubber boots. If not exactly the height of fashion, they were at least sturdy and low-heeled—perfectly adequate for riding. Castiel cursed silently to himself.

              “Oh, hell, did mine not fit?” Dean laughed, folding the newspaper back to the table. “I didn’t even see. I’m sorry, Cas.”

              “It’s all right,” Castiel said, ducking away to pull the boots on under the table. “You’ve been very thoughtful.”

              “So I figure we’ll run down to the bridge and see what’s what after breakfast,” Dean went on as Castiel returned to his food. “No sense in taking your carriage down again if it’s no good for crossing. And either way we can take a spin up to the ridge after that. Just a couple miles. It’s a real sight. You do—wait, you do ride, don’t you?” he suddenly paused to check, a flash of half-formed disappointment crossing his fair features. Something in Castiel’s face must have betrayed him.

              “Well, I _have_.”

              _Having ridden_ and  _riding_ were two very different things and both of them knew it.

              “How much?”

              “Um. A handful of times.”

              Anna and Castiel had grown up in the relentlessly industrial streets of Lowell, walking and taking coaches, and Castiel had never seen the need for much else. He would never be able to keep up with Dean without breaking his neck.

              “Do you not want to go?” Dean asked, more quietly than was his wont.

              Somehow Castiel couldn’t bear to tell him no. “I… I do. Of course I do. Only I’m sure I won’t be the greatest company.”

              “We’ll take it easy,” Dean insisted with a boyish grin, good humor evidently returned.

              The rest of breakfast passed in companionable silence, and then they were heading out to the barn, puddles reflecting the pink autumn sun only to splash apart under Dean’s brisk footfalls.

              The groom whose spare boots Castiel wore had tacked up two horses and held them in the yard, their heads bent to the water trough.

              Dean claimed the darker and shorter of them, leaving Castiel the blood bay Dean had charged in on that first day. He hadn’t expected to be given that one.

              “Don’t worry, Rex won’t run off on you unless you ask for it,” Dean supplied, as if having read Castiel’s doubts directly. “Believe me, you’re better off with him than Finnegan here. He’s only four and a bit of a firecracker. Just bought him last week.”

              “If you say so,” Castiel said, stroking Rex’s broad velvet nose. He remembered the way the Thoroughbred had snorted and pranced under Dean the last time he’d seen him.

              Nevertheless they mounted (Dean as if he was simply swinging onto a barstool and Castiel with a bit more of a heave) and walked out of the yard. Castiel fidgeted with the reins, not sure how tight to grip them.

              Dean made all manner of small-talk as they clopped along the driveway to the muddy road. It took a while to reach the covered bridge at their sedate walk, but Castiel appreciated it all the same. He could tell Dean kept up the monologue to distract him, and the morning sky _was_ rather glorious, a patchwork of silvered clouds and angelic rays. Any foliage that had clung to the trees now lay humbled by the storm, small armies of leaves scudding here and there over the grass like fiery fairies.

              They were not the first to think of the old bridge. A dozen men from nearby farms had arrived before them, all standing around, clucking, and shaking their heads.

             The flood had taken away a girder and shifted the entire structure slightly sideways in the softened banks. The water must have briefly risen high enough to push against the whole thing broadside. It might hold up to foot traffic, Castiel saw as one fellow ventured out onto the boards, sounding them out with slow, bouncing strides, but it would be folly to take a ton or so of horse and cart across it.

             “Well, that’s a bust,” Dean declared, clearing his throat. “The east road’ll get you back to Lowell, of course, but it’ll damn near double your time.”

             “Yes,” Castiel sighed, hardly looking forward to it. “It will.”

             “You can… you can stay another day, y’know,” Dean offered.

             “Oh, I couldn’t continue to impose on you,” Castiel protested, frankly amazed at the suggestion. “I’ve nothing with me. Dean, I’m sitting here on a borrowed horse and in borrowed clothes and—”

             “Yeah, but the blue suits you.”

             Castiel flushed, grasping for words, but Dean had already turned away and trotted back up the hill.

             In his rush to follow, Castiel kicked Rex a little harder than he intended and the Thoroughbred leapt out from under him at a canter. Castiel closed his thighs like a vice and grabbed a handful of mane in his surprise but managed to keep his stirrups and his seat.

             To his great relief, Rex did not seem inclined to surpass Dean and Finnegan but slowed as soon as they caught them at the top of the rise.

             “Hey, that was pretty good,” Dean put forth encouragingly.

             “I didn’t mean to do it,” Castiel confessed, slowly relaxing. He opened his mouth to confront Dean about the earlier compliment but shut it just as quickly. The moment had passed. Castiel would seem the strange one now for harping on it. Nevertheless, he glanced down at his dark blue sleeve, fingering it between thumb and forefinger. How much thought had Dean put into choosing it for him?

             “Come on and let me show you the ridge, Cas. You can make it.”

             “Very well,” Castiel agreed warily.

             They resumed at a trot this time, the horses’ hooves eating up the distance. Castiel didn’t have as much leisure to admire his surroundings now, concentrating on keeping himself centered. He grew winded fighting against the bounce of the gait whether he lifted himself in time with it or tried to sit. Dean, for his part, barely moved.

             But Finnegan was spoiling for a gallop, Castiel could see, all his muscles constantly bunching in anticipation only to settle at scolding little tugs from Dean’s hand. When they finally reached a vast, rolling hill covered in evergreens and purple aster, Dean warned Castiel he planned to give the horse his head. Castiel slowed to a walk immediately, holding Rex back.

             Finnegan threw a frisky buck when Dean squeezed him forward and pounded off in a dark streak, tail whipping in the breeze. But Castiel was drawn to watch Dean, not his mount. He looked more at home going forty miles an hour than he ever had in the fine house on Eden Hill. He rolled along with the flurry of movement like it was nothing, taking the clearest path up the hill until he disappeared behind a stand of trees.

             Castiel moved to follow now, trying to make sure Rex understood he was not asking for the same thing. But the horse had his head high in the air, ears swiveling and nostrils flaring. He didn’t like being left behind.

             Halfway up the hill, Castiel lost control. He meant only to adjust his seat as he leaned forward into the incline, but Rex evidently felt something he took for “go,” and within seconds Castiel had tears in his eyes and a deafening howl of wind in his ears, the landscape flashing by in a blur.

             He was fairly sure he’d pulled every muscle in his legs and back as he tensed and clung, and yet… and yet it was exhilarating. He hadn’t fallen. He was flying faster than he’d ever gone except on a train. He could almost forget the thousand pounds of horseflesh under him and imagine the fleet legs were his own. He looked up at the frosted and gilded sky, feeling like he’d left his body behind entirely—

             And then Rex stopped.

             In a more dramatic reenactment of his performance at the top of the small hill, the horse skidded to a halt, and Castiel went straight over his head.

             He must have flipped in mid-air because when he landed he was _facing_ the long red face above him, all the air knocked clean out of him. His chest _burned_. He could no more breathe lying on that hillside than he could have at the bottom of the sea. He clutched his arms to himself and then lay still, waiting for his senses to return.

             “Cas!”

             Big hands were patting over him, gripping his shoulders. A shadow blocked the light beyond his eyelids, and then Castiel felt himself being scooped up into it.

             “ _Shit_. Are you all right? Answer me, Cas,” Dean pleaded.

             “Ah—yeah,” Castiel groaned. He waved a hand impatiently. More of a twitch, really. He just needed to get his wind back.

             “God, I thought you’d snapped your spine,” Dean was saying.

             When Castiel unscrewed his eyes from their grimace, he saw Dean’s freckled nose and concerned gaze a scant foot away and suddenly lost the ability to breath all over again. He stared up at Dean, pained and transfixed.

             Dean sucked his bottom lip guiltily. “You sure you didn’t break anything? Does your head hurt? Do you feel ill?”

             “Ground’s soft,” Castiel pointed out hoarsely, realizing what a mess of mud and moss he’d crashed into.

             Still, Dean took a long few seconds to release his hold and sit back. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll tie up the horses.”

             They were both tearing away at grass despite the bits in their mouths, Castiel saw, but Dean rounded them up and looped the reins around a low tree branch. He returned just as Castiel was sitting up and swiveling around to see where he’d landed.

             The ridge fell away thirty or forty feet ahead, the fields and woods below sparkling in the sunlight. He could see the distant smoke of invisible farmhouses, the swooping pattern of a hawk, and a flock of sheep that looked like a lazy cloud moving across the land.

             “You were right. This is worth seeing,” he commented as Dean sunk down next to him once again.

             “Told you.”

             “But it’s hardly the Rockies,” Castiel said quietly, pulling a clump of damp leaf litter from his hair and slicking it off his fingers.

             “Better company though," Dean asserted, clearly grasping for an easy tone.

             “Better than Benny?”

             Castiel didn’t know where that had come from, but he bit his tongue in haste, immediately regretting his nosiness.

             Dean turned to regard him, mouth flat, eyes wide and searching. His throat bobbed in a hard swallow. “Do you… Cas, do you _get_ what Benny was? To me?”

             “Maybe now I do,” Castiel breathed, hardly daring to move. Dean had lived alone in the wilderness with Benjamin Lafitte for some time. Followed him across a thousand miles of the continent to a state he didn’t even like… and only left when Benny had gone and found himself a wife.

             Dean colored, but said nothing. Denied nothing.

             “I’m sorry,” Castiel blurted.

             “For what?”

             “Bringing it up.” But that wasn’t really it.

             “You’ll keep it to yourself, won’t you?”

             “Of course I will."

             “Good. That’s good." He looked, however, as if it were small consolation. “Do you… still wanna stay tonight?” he croaked, sounding as if he expected nothing of the sort.

             Castiel recalled that he had never actually accepted the invitation in the first place. He would be expected back at the firm, and he had a case hearing to prepare for on Wednesday. Still…

             “Yes. Yes, I’ll stay.”

 

             They walked the horses all the way back to Eden Hill.

             Castiel took a hot bath with Epsom salts that he told Dean helped the aches tremendously. A white lie. He felt as if he’d been beaten with a bat and had a red rose of a bruise blooming right over his tailbone.

             They had dinner, played checkers, and sipped the leftover cider punch. They ate a light supper and read magazines by the fire. All the while, Dean made no more personal comments, no more teasing overtures. And when it came time for bed, they went each to their separate rooms without hesitation.

             Castiel lay awake a long time that night.

             In some way, Dean had loved Benny. Unlikely as it seemed, Dean Winchester—who could probably win over most any woman in the county—had loved and lusted after some rugged fur trapper instead.

             What was more, he’d gathered Castiel into his arms almost like... almost like...

             Castiel throat tightened and he turned his face into the pillow. He imagined what would have happened if Dean had come closer still. If Dean had bent down and kissed him. His mouth would have been so warm, Castiel knew. It would have been like drinking hot, honeyed wine.

             And what would have happened _then_? They’d have to come back to the house, of course. And maybe—at a time like right now—Castiel would’ve heard a knock on his door. And he would’ve let Dean in. Into the smoky autumn darkness where they would have stretched out under the eiderdown, hands resting in each other’s hair and nightshirts....

             He didn’t take it much further than that. That would be so much already. Dream Dean understood. He was happy to simply lie next to Castiel, trading sleepy, skimming touches. But would the real one feel the same? Or would he be insulted by Castiel’s reticence? Impatient with the fact that he barely knew what to do? If Dean sought a new lover, Castiel was about the least experienced candidate he could have stumbled upon.

             There came a knock at his door.

             Castiel fairly jumped out of his skin. It had been a full hour since he’d shut himself in and blown out the candle. Could that really be Dean? He shuffled quickly to the door and opened it some six inches, at a total loss as to what he’d say when they came face to face.

             But Dean wasn’t there. No one was.

             He flung the door wider, peering up and down the moonlight-striped corridor. Nothing stirred. And, come to think of it, if Dean had left his room wouldn’t Castiel have heard it prior to the knock itself? Slowly, Castiel latched the door. He padded back to the canopied bed but sat up against the pillows, waiting for another sound. He almost _hoped_ it would come—clearer this time—revealing itself as something perfectly ordinary and understandable…

             The sound came not again and Castiel eventually drifted into a wary, cold sleep, wishing he was not alone.

 

             He struggled awake rather late, bones creaking with a more settled soreness than the day before. His eyes felt sandy with grit, his skin chill. When he swung his legs out into the air, he found it distinctly glacial. The water in the wash basin had even formed a rime of ice that he knew had not been there the night before.

             Castiel hurried to dress, shivering like a kitten in the snow. He rushed downstairs into a wall of warmth, relieved that they must have the fires going full blast against the freeze.

             But only a modest crackle emanated from the decorative stove in the corner of the dining room, and when Castiel glanced out the window he saw no frost had touched the ground. He went to warm his hands by the lattice grille of the stove, scowling in confusion and feeling as if he still inhabited some half-sensical dreamworld.

             “You all right, Cas?” Dean inquired, entering the room and grabbing coffee before he even sat.

             “My joints are just a bit stiff after yesterday.”

             “I'm sorry.”

             “It’s not your fault.”

              Dean neither argued nor agreed, but Castiel heard him sipping loudly from his cup. “Hey, uh, you didn’t hear anything strange last night, did you?”

              Castiel spun around, brow furrowed. “A sort of knocking, yes. Past midnight. But there was no one around.”

              “Me, too,” Dean mused, obviously irritated. “More around four o’ clock. _Goddammit_ , if there are walls cracking in this place—”

              Someone pointedly cleared their throat in the doorway. The maid, her eyes wide.

              “Excuse me, Bridget,” Dean grunted.

              “Oh, never you mind, Mr. Winchester. It’s just—ah, Sally’s sent me to fetch you down to the cellar. The workmen—them for the paving stones? They’ve, ah… they’ve _found_ something.”

              “What now?”

              “Something bad, I think."

              Dean scrubbed a hand over his face, groaning. “I _want_ to love this house, but I swear she’s trying to kill me. It can’t be the foundation. Cas, _tell_ me it’s not the foundation?”

              “It’s not the foundation,” Castiel parroted back earnestly, feeling for him.

              “Thank you.” Dean clunked his cup back to its saucer with a little splash and followed Bridget through the kitchen. Castiel tailed along after them, bumping his head once in the narrow, switchback stairwell that led into the bowels of the house. He was still rubbing it sullenly when they emerged into the flickering light of the miner’s lamps used by the workmen below.

              The three of them pulled up short on the bottom stair, the floor too black and soupy to be very inviting. The well had long ceased its gush, but the old dirt of the cellar would take some time to dry out with no air flowing.

              Three gruff fellows slogged through the mire with spades and pails. The broadest of them, a ruddy man with a great walrus-y mustache, approached as soon as he spotted them.

              “Sir, I hate to tell you this, but we’ve come upon something awful grisly,” he informed Dean, beetle-black eyes darting to and fro. “Awful grisly. Come take a look—if your shoes can handle it.”

              Dean huffed, clearly insulted to be taken for some species of prissy gentlemen. He forged heedlessly into the mud and Castiel, on an urgent whim, followed.

              A tight archway led into a smaller antechamber, less flooded now but stinking of rot in a way Castiel did not remember from his first visit to the cellar. A fourth workman crouched low over a shallow hole, his bulk blocking the light from the nearest lamp.

              “Oh my God,” Dean gagged all at once, his voice thick with anger and disgust.

              Castiel jostled to see around his shoulder. The sight that met his eyes took several, chest-clenching moments to resolve into something that made sense.

              A crumpled and sodden human skeleton lay in the hole, the disintegrating pine lid of a makeshift coffin broken off to one side. Its arms were crushed and twisted among its ribcage at odd angles, and its eye sockets stared up at them, strings of fibrous muck webbed across them like the lace of some unholy veil.

              Castiel felt the urge to cross himself, but his limbs had gone unnaturally heavy with shock. Something else happened instead. In the oppressive silence of the room, he felt Dean’s hand twitch out to his sleeve—a brief and needful knotting of fingers before they seemed to remember themselves and jerk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed this first part! I have many, more exciting things planned!
> 
> Let me know if you think Cas and Dean (and Charlie!) seem reasonably like themselves despite the setting. It's difficult not being able to let them talk in just the same way they would on the show... And I've never written anything from Cas' perspective before, so that's posing something of a challenge. 
> 
> There will be a few more familiar faces coming up (as well as some things that should justify that Explicit rating). :D


	2. The Graves on Eden Hill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel returns with reinforcements to help Dean as the dangers of Eden Hill start to make themselves known.

             As much as it pained him, Castiel’s professional experience could not let him hear of the body’s transfer to a more appropriate resting place before a trained detective could inspect the site. “They may have the means to estimate how long this poor soul has lain here, Dean,” he’d cautioned. “Or determine whether they were murdered.”

             “Christ above, Cas, of  _course_  they were murdered,” Dean had hissed, throwing up his hands in frustration. “A fella doesn’t shove a corpse into his basement just for his own amusement without murdering it first!”

            The workmen had been dismissed (with an extra roll of sweaty bank notes pressed into the foreman’s hands by an impatient Dean), a sheet draped over the grave, and the cellar door locked. Dean had taken the key from Sally for his own pocket, pacing furiously in the entryway while Castiel prepared to leave.

            “The east road’s long, but it’s wide and even. Hurry, won’t you, Cas?”

            “Of course. I’ll have the police here before nightfall if I have to whip them up the highway myself,” Castiel had promised, his evening-wear from Saturday slung over his arm and his hat already halfway to his head.

            Yet he’d felt an overwhelming urge to halt Dean’s anxious circling with a well-timed hand, to crush him into a one-armed embrace, to tuck his own chin over Dean’s shoulder for just a few fierce, ardent seconds. He wanted to draw the fear out of him like a poison, take it and bury it under his own cold layers of restraint. Dean burned too hot, felt too keenly. It would be a torment to him, sitting idle in his house while others handled the situation.

            But the coach had pulled up to the door then and Castiel had only clasped Dean’s broad hand in farewell, reminding him that he could not personally return right away. “I have cases, Dean, I’m sorry—write me as soon as you can?”

            “I will,” Dean had sworn. And that was that.

            The journey to Lowell had tested Castiel sorely, and not only because he yet ached like an old man from his fall the day before. Every jounce of the speeding coach sent a spike of pain up his backbone and straight into his conscience. To hell with his cases and to hell with Zachariah. If he only had the nerve to follow his desires, he would head straight back to Eden Hill as soon as he’d packed a suitcase…

            When the lathered, blowing horses clattered to a halt outside the Massachusetts state police office, Castiel leapt out, waving Tom on. “Go home! I can walk to the firm from here!”

            The driver tipped his hat and was gone, likely less than thrilled to take on Castiel’s business again. He’d have to give him a generous bonus for the overtime, Castiel thought absently as he strode through the darkly stained, brass-studded doors of the station.

            “I need to report an unlawfully disposed of body,” he announced without preamble to the duty officer at the front desk, slamming down the shoes and dress coat he still awkwardly carried. “Discovered this morning and very likely murdered.”

            “In the river or the rail yard?” the sergeant drawled with a bored chewing motion. “Either way, go tell it to the city cops.”

            “Neither. In the home of an upstate gentleman. Eden Hill. It’s outside Lowell’s jurisdiction.”

            The officer blinked and took up a pen. “Is that so? Finally something I don’t hear every day. Freshly murdered, you say?”

            “No, a skeleton. Buried in a shallow grave in the house’s cellar.”

            “Oh,” the sergeant sighed with toss of his curly head. “So we’re not exactly dealing with a recent killer on the loose, are we? In that case, we can probably have someone out there in a few days.”

            “A few days? No, please, it must be today,” Castiel insisted.

            “Look here,” he answered, “We’ve only got five men at this post and a _routine_ to follow. I’m telling you, no one’s jumping to attention for a crime that probably happened before the damn Rebel War.”

            “Sergeant, I’ll have you know I am an attorney and—” Castiel began, blood rising to his face, but drew up short as an imposing fellow in uniform emerged from a nearby office. Of a height with Castiel, he kept a neat beard but almost no hair on his head. And he was as black as any man Castiel had ever seen.

            “I’ll go, Rhodes,” he interrupted, shrugging on a long overcoat from the rack behind the desk.

            “You listening at doors again?” the officer called Rhodes harrumphed, settling back in his chair.

            “Only way I can get an assignment around here.”

            Rhodes evidently had nothing to say to that. He marked something down in his book and unceremoniously disappeared behind a newspaper.

            “Detective Corporal Victor Henriksen,” the eavesdropper announced, stiffly presenting his palm to Castiel in what looked like nothing so much as a challenge.

            “Castiel Milton, Esquire,” Castiel returned, taking the offered hand. The man's actual name rang no bells, but Castiel did recall his position. His recruitment had made the papers last year. “Thank you for your dedication, detective.”

            “Thank you for the case,” Henriksen said, softening incrementally. “I’ll leave at once. But tell me what you can first.” He withdrew a writing pad and stub of a pencil from his pocket.

            Castiel conveyed as much as he knew, accompanying Henrikson back into his broom closet of an office where the detective retrieved a small caddy stocked with rulers, anatomical references, delicate metal probes, and other tools of his trade. They exited the station together and parted only as Henrikson turned back into the cramped stable mews.

            It was all he could do for the moment, Castiel told himself as he dodged puddles of filth in the streets. He nearly plowed right on past the spattered white façade of Adler & Milton before shaking himself back to attention and hurrying through the front door.

            “Hell’s hinges, what’s happened to you?” Zachariah demanded, looking up from where he stood at one of the clerk’s desks. Castiel groaned inwardly. He’d hoped that his partner would be otherwise occupied at court.

            And so Castiel was forced to explain his tardiness, his attire, and his ruffled state all while shifting uncomfortably on the doorstep like a truant schoolboy. It sounded more and more absurd the longer he spoke the tale aloud. He longed to disappear into the wallpaper and slink quietly away.

            “Sounds as if the Winchester estate has turned into quite the adventure for you,” Zachariah huffed with a trace of private amusement. “Though not exactly an adventure of the  _profitable_  sort. Still, cultivating the friendship of well-off rabble like Winchester and that wretched hag Middleton might serve you well in the long run. Their sort is bound to need legal counsel sooner or later.”

            Castiel’s heart pinched in his chest. He struggled for a moment to speak around the accompanying lump in his throat. “They’re not rabble, and I’ll thank you to keep those kinds of opinions to yourself,” he snapped, surprising even himself with his vehemence before turning on his heel and marching into his own office.

            Zachariah didn’t choose to pursue him, thank God. Castiel didn’t think he could bear looking at his odious, condescending smirk again today. The only breach of his privacy came some five minutes later when his own secretary knocked tentatively with a cup of tea and a pile of documents in hand.

            “Thank you, Simon,” Castiel said wearily, taking the hot tea and letting its sugared warmth coat his scratchy throat.

            “I sent out all those summons letters to new defendants this morning,” Simon informed him. “And gathered the files you’ll need for the Yates vs. Englewood hearing.”

            “Oh, bless you. Leave them on the bookshelf there? Oh, and I had something here I needed notarized…”

            So the rest of the day passed. Castiel kept more than busy, steamrolling through his work until the hazy white sun had set and he realized he’d grown so hungry he could hardly think straight. He tramped home to the concerned overtures of Ellen Harvelle, who had a turkey soup simmering low on the stovetop and her hair already down. She tried to apologize for the meal's meagerness, pointing out that she hadn’t even been sure he intended to return that night, but Castiel would hear no such effacement of her excellent cooking, devouring two bowls with a vengeance before retiring to his own modest suite upstairs.

            Castiel banked the fire and poured himself a bit of dry sherry, sitting up in bed with it while staring at the wavy flare of the gas streetlamp outside his window.

            He thought immediately of Dean. But Henriksen would have had time to reach Eden Hill before dark, he knew. And Dean Winchester had led a wide-ranging, unsheltered life. He could surely handle the prospect of a body in his cellar better than the average man.

            Even so, as he hunkered down into his pillow, the sherry glass drained on the bedside table, Castiel couldn’t help but shudder in primitive horror at the prospect of Dean trying to sleep so many miles away with that unnatural coldness lurking in the small hours of the night, with those fever-dream people living in the mirrors, with that room full of profane treasures….

               

            The next several days went by in a pantomime of normalcy. Castiel took his meals at the regular times, walked to the library to return a book he’d borrowed, and performed his job as studiously as ever. But he inspected the mail, both at home and at the firm, more critically than he’d ever followed the proceedings of any lawsuit.

            After a week, he even found himself, as if by chance, taking a detour from his errand to the city solicitor’s office and stopping instead at the station to ask after Henriksen. But the detective was not in at the time and Castiel found himself rebuffed once again by the immovable Rhodes.

            When a plain household envelope from Dean Winchester did finally arrive, Castiel all but bowled over Mrs. Harvelle in his urgency to be upstairs and alone with it. He tore into the letter, leaning into the light of his oil lamp to decipher Dean’s scribbling hand:

_Dear Cas,_

_First, thank you for sending Det. Henriksen as fast as you did. He has a respectability about him that I didn't see much among certain “authorities” in the West. I’ve never had much faith in police_   _, but the merits of this fellow spoke for themselves._

_His conclusion was that the bones were those of a woman no more than 30 who died several decades ago. By the unhealed fractures of her neck, he believed she was hanged or otherwise badly strangulated by something other than human hands. Of course, hanging might point to the lady taking her own life, but why then would her body be concealed? All clues point to foul play._

_But no female servants or neighboring women were ever reported missing as far as we can find. And the only ladies to ever live in this house as owners were my grandmother Mildred and my great-grandmother Elizabeth. Mildred died much too old to fit the bones and Elizabeth died of consumption in 1808 when Henry was only a child of 5. Both are buried in the family plot behind the arbor._

_Though Sally has lived at Eden Hill for 18 years and Galliard 25, Henriksen believes the burial happened well before that. He spoke to them both but neither had an ounce of useful insight—other than to insist that Henry could never have been responsible for such a thing._

_I don’t mind telling you their unasked-for defense of him raises my hackles. They were too quick to assume we suspected my grandfather when Henriksen hadn't even said so. I suppose it's a moot point now that he’s dead, but I can't help but think that a man obsessed with such ugly subjects as he was might have killed in the name of science or magic or whatever it was he believed in. Maybe this woman was somebody no one missed—an immigrant or streetwalker from the city? And maybe my father left home so young because he knew Henry to be a secret monster?_

_It all turns my head. I feel disgusted by everything around me._

_We dug up the rest of the cellar but found nothing. And since no identity for either the woman or the murderer could be determined, Henriksen is resigned to a cold case. We called for the nearest reverend and re-buried the bones at the back of the cemetery. I suppose that’s the end of it as far as the law is concerned._

_Here I would like to make a joke about what a rotten host I am and how you’ll probably never again want to come to one of my parties. But I don’t have the words for it, Cas. Since Henriksen left, I almost begin to worry I'm going insane. I hear every sound the house makes and think I see things out of the corner of my eye. You are right that there is something in the mirror. Maybe in all the mirrors._

_I believe I need a different kind of expert than Henriksen (and hopefully it's not a doctor). After much avoidance, I have finally given in to Sally’s proposal to contact a certain lady in Lowell—one she has read about in some sensational periodical or other. A clipping with her name and address are enclosed—information I include with the hope that you will not mind doing me a very big favor in connection with this:_

_She is, you see, a person of very little means and limited travel. She will need assistance to get all the way to Eden Hill. If you can escort her here this Friday by coach, I would be very grateful. It was the earliest date she would agree to. If you are unable to do this—and I will certainly understand if so—please let me know as soon as possible by express mail so I can come and get her myself._

_I hope you do not believe me cracked in the head when you see what it is I'm planning. Thank you, Castiel, for putting up with me._

_Yours,_

_Dean_

            Castiel read the letter twice over before extracting the shiny, faded clipping from the envelope. He ran his fingers over the words, heartsick and shaky.

            He both did and did not want to believe Dean Winchester cracked in the head.

 

* * *

 

            On Friday, Castiel condensed his caseload as tightly as he could into the morning hours and, with his apologies, left Adler & Milton at noon. His previous years of faultless attendance certainly served him well now as Zachariah merely shrugged and told him to be sure and enjoy himself with the rabble.

            This time, he had the forethought to pack a bag with at least two days of essentials. And he’d successfully bought back Tom’s indulgence the day before with a box of prime cigars. They trotted now toward a low and twisting part of town, its lanes thick with factory smoke and too many children, its tenements and narrow homes leaning practically on top of one another. The brick of the house at which they stopped glittered black with soot, and the street smelled faintly of overused latrines.

            “Here, Mr. Milton?” Tom asked archly when Castiel alighted.

            “Here,” he replied, glancing down for perhaps the tenth time at the clipping he carried.

**PAMELA BARNES**

**Medium & Spiritualist**

**55 Old Porter Lane**

**Lowell, Massachusetts**

 

            When the door opened to his knock, Castiel was met with a dark but tidy parlor, its worn brocade furniture cleverly arranged to take the best advantage of the space. The plain, grey-eyed woman who admitted him looked not at all surprised by his arrival.

            “Miss Barnes?” he asked, removing his hat as she shut the door behind him.

            “I am, though not the one you need,” she said. “I’m Lenore, Pamela’s sister. She’ll be right out. Can I get you anything while you wait, sir?”

            “I’m perfectly well, thank you.” He sat gingerly in a rocking chair, eyeing a case of curiously bulky books as Lenore excused herself through a narrow door. The house smelled of lavender with only an undercurrent of the acrid blue smoke so pervasive outside.

            Within a few moments, another set of footsteps approached. A different woman emerged into the sitting room and Castiel rose to introduce himself—only to realize there was no need. He knew her instantly.

            “Celeste! What on earth are you doing here?” he gasped happily, taking in her practical traveling dress and carpet bag.

            “Dean wrote me, too, silly goose!” she answered, batting at him with one playful hand. “Oh, to be sure, he didn’t exactly  _invite_  me. But when I read his—for lack of a better word— _rant_  about the house being haunted and he mentioned he was having the famous Pamela Barnes out this Friday, I just couldn’t resist!”

            “He told you outright the house is haunted?” Castiel asked, a chill prickling his scalp.

            “Well, no, but it certainly  _sounds_  like it, don’t you think? I went to one of Pamela’s séances last Christmas, and it was completely marvelous. The things she knew! She said she didn’t mind in the least if I came out with you today.” 

            “I’m glad to have you as well. For one thing, you’ve saved me from a rather long coach ride with a perfect stranger,” Castiel whispered.

            “Oh, you’d have warmed up to me quick enough,” a new voice announced.

            She entered with Lenore at her side—a handsome brunette perhaps a few years his and Celeste’s elder. She wore a severe yet peculiarly fashionable pinstriped dress as well as a pair of smoky spectacles.

            “Oh, excuse me, madam,” Castiel fumbled. “I meant no offense. I’m Castiel Milton, and I’ll be pleased to escort you to Eden Hill.”

            “Don’t give it a second thought. Pamela Barnes, at your service,” she said, inclining her head. “Now, if you would be so kind as to grab my things by the door there?”

            “Of course, of course.” Castiel hefted Pamela’s battered suitcase and only then spotted the long, thin cane waiting next to it. It was not anything a grown person could hope to lean upon for support. It was not that kind of cane. Castiel flushed, glancing back to Pamela’s dark glasses, the special books on the shelf. He hadn’t even realized.

            “Be careful,” Lenore begged her sister as they made their way out.

            “I always am,” Pamela returned with a decidedly wicked smirk.

            Lenore pulled her close on the stoop and pecked her once on the cheek. “ _Liar_.”

            Pamela climbed into the carriage with only a brief groping at the door, and then they were all piled in, Castiel wedged between the wall and Celeste’s bunched skirts. The combined warmth of all three of them quickly heated the small space to a downright cozy temperature, the dark November winds beating ineffectually at the windows.

 

            But, as the afternoon ticked by, it turned out that Pamela and Celeste enriched the ride with much more than their natural source of heat.

            Celeste produced jam sandwiches and clove candies from somewhere amid her belongings before they had even left the city limits, and by the time they’d been on the road half an hour was already proposing trivia and guessing games to pass the time.

            “All right, all right, Two-Lies-and-a-Truth now,” she announced, shoving the waxed paper from the last of the sandwiches haphazardly back into her bag. “And you must include at least  _one_  scandalous statement. I’ll start. I, Celeste Middleton, am afraid of dogs, once became violently ill on a nun’s shoes, and have _never_ kissed a man.”

            “The nun’s the truth,” Pamela put forth immediately, a small smile on her lips.

            “Well!” Celeste huffed. “This isn’t going to be very fun with you around! Can you sense every time a person is lying?”

            “I only get impressions,” she admitted. “Though I can tell you’re actually more disgusted by the kiss.”

            Celeste tossed her head but didn’t blush. “Well, in my defense, I was very young. And stupid. And it was for science.”

            Pamela laughed, a rich, throaty sound. “Sounds like my first marriage.”

            “Here’s to learning better,” Celeste quipped, raising an invisible toast.

            “Hear, hear. Knowing yourself and what you want is one of the greatest blessings. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Milton?”

            Castiel started, looking across Celeste to where Pamela smirked over at him. “Oh—yes. Yes, of course.”

            “Why don’t you see if  _you_  can fool me?” she suggested.

            “Yes, go on, Castiel,” Celeste said, bumping him with her shoulder. “I don’t know nearly enough about you.”

            Wanting to be a good sport, Castiel wracked his brain. It was only a game, after all. “Very well. Um… let’s see… I collect rare coins, the last letter I received was a love letter and, despite our present mission, I do not believe in ghosts.”

            “How fascinating,” Pamela purred, hunching forward with a creak of her stays. “But I’ve got you in my sights—if you’ll pardon the irony. The letter is the truth.”

            “Why, no,” Castiel replied lightly, rather pleased to have tricked a supposed psychic. “It was the last statement—the ghosts. I don’t believe in them.”

            Pamela’s grin only grew wider. She looked almost predatory. “Oh, darling. Yes you do.”

            “I assure you, madam, I’m only going to help a friend in distress. I know what I believe.”

            She  _tsk_ ed. “You may know by the light of day. But there’s a fear in you, Mr. Milton. A real dread. Of what we’re going to find in that house. I’ve felt it pouring off you in waves ever since we left the city.”

            Castiel bit his tongue, carefully considering his next words. “Very well. I’ll allow that, against all reasoned judgment, the house does make me… uncomfortable. But you’re forgetting one important thing, Miss Barnes. The letter was still a lie. I have never, in fact, received a love letter from anyone.” He sat back with crossed arms, quite satisfied.

            “Not all love letters are dripping with sonnets and sighs,” Pamela proclaimed, undaunted. If anything, she looked more pleased with herself than ever. “Some are much more than that.”

            She would say no more of it then, settling into the corner for a cat nap she claimed she needed in preparation for her coming work. And though Celeste valiantly tried to rally Castiel to further conversation, he could only fall more and more quiet, his thoughts quivering down into a dim and yearning place where he knew that the last letter he received had been from Dean.

 

            Despite his surprise at the additional guest, Dean welcomed Celeste with genuine pleasure and relief when they arrived on Eden Hill’s grand doorstep. For his part, Castiel could barely return Dean’s greeting as he ushered them all out of the weather and into the plush, dusty entryway. A drawn, feral shadow seemed to have sharpened their host's cheekbones and tightened the lines around his mouth since Castiel had last laid eyes on him, and it pained him to see it.

            “But wherever is your butler?” Celeste wondered aloud, allowing Dean to take her tartan shawl.

            “He’s come down with an ugly chest cold,” Dean explained. His eyes darted away briefly. “Coughing his old head off. Sally’s seeing to him in their quarters.”

            “What of the maid then?” Castiel asked. “Bridget, wasn't it?”

            “Bridget… left us,” Dean admitted with a grimly polite smile. “Over a week ago. Ned the groom, too. Not that I mind tending the barn myself, but—”

            “They were afraid,” Pamela interrupted.

            They all turned to her there in the entrance hall, falling silent. Castiel thought she looked older then than before. All the warmly vulgar joy in her voice and face had vanished. Her brows furrowed, and she brought her hand to her temple. “Excuse the view I’m about to give you, but I have to get these blasted heavy things off. They give me a very distracting headache after a while…”

            Pamela lifted the dark spectacles from her nose then, slotting them into the collar of her dress for safekeeping. And, against his will, Castiel let out a small, concerned groan at what had been concealed behind them.

            “It’s all right. It’s long healed,” Pamela said. “Munitions factory accident when I was a girl.”

            Two milky glass spheres filled the sockets where her eyes ought to have sat, the lids and flesh around them drooping and pocked with white scar tissue. It looked like a burn weal that must have blistered hellishly at the time.

            “Can I… get you a compress or anything? For the headache?” Dean inquired, swallowing rather hard.

            “No, thank you. I don’t think we have time for such delicacies,” Pamela answered, her blind gaze swooping over their surroundings. She drew long, almost lusty breaths, the fingers of her right hand opening and closing in a slow, deliberate fist.

            “What do you mean?”

            “Your servants left their fear coiling through the air here like smoke rings,” the medium went on, taking a few steps down the hall with her cane swishing before her like a metronome. “As did others before them. There are layers and layers of unease etched onto… onto everything. With one big sickening streak of mortal terror lying at the bottom….”

            The three of them looked back and forth between each other for a moment before Celeste broke the tension. “Well, this is a  _bit_  different than last year’s Christmas séance…” she said with a shaky smile.

            “I’ve got to rake in the rent money somehow,” Pamela replied absently. “Telling a bunch of people what they want to hear in their sweet little parlors that are not and have never been haunted takes care of that just fine. But Mr. Winchester here doesn’t scare—and doesn’t reassure—so easy. You’ve brought me here with good reason, sir. Now take me to the cellar.”

            “What, already?” Celeste asked with a start. “You aren’t going to just… light some candles and have us all sit in a circle?”

            “Later. I need to feel out the landscape of this place first. The… spiritscape, if you will. Take me to the cellar,” she repeated.

            “It’s this way,” Dean said, taking her arm and leading her through the dining room, kitchen, and to the low, scratched basement door. It had remained locked, Castiel noted, as Dean drew the key from his breast pocket to open it.

            “That won’t have helped anything,” Pamela observed, hearing the key turn.

            “I know,” Dean murmured back. “Cas, will you get those two lamps from the shelf?”

            Dean and Pamela descended first, one lantern held out before them in Dean’s strong right hand. Castiel and Celeste followed with another, the dank blackness of the basement swallowing them not unlike some great wet hell-mouth. Castiel had the feeling of crossing over into a still and subhuman world. The world of sewers and catacombs and caverns. He prayed only his imagination made it so. After all, he’d visited the cellar before—before he knew what it contained—and had not quailed then. But, no matter how he willed it to stop, his heart drummed out an erratic, fluttering beat. It felt like a caged bird battling for life in his chest.

            Crisp new paving stones had been installed in the well room, Castiel noted with some surprise as they reached the bottom. “I laid these myself after Henricksen and I finished tearing up the dirt for more evidence,” Dean whispered to them. “I only got as far as this room before I had to stop.”

            “Before you couldn’t stand to come down here anymore, you mean,” Pamela replied in equally hushed tones. She turned without prompting toward the archway leading to the antechamber. “The grave was this way.”

            “Yes.”

            She slipped forward, cane tapping, and ducked through into the darkness alone. They all followed as far as the threshold, watching her shadowed figure circle the patch of loosely turned dirt by the wall. Pamela crouched, heedless of her hemline, and pushed her fingers into the velvety black soil. “This is dead earth. Full of blood and bile. And resentment.”

            “We moved the bones to the plot by the vineyard,” Dean said.

            “Her bones, yes. Her history, no. This spot holds a great deal of significance.”

            “Do you know who she was?” Castiel asked.

            “I’ll ask. But not here. Somewhere… safer.” Pamela stood, moving quickly toward their group. “Back upstairs.”

            No one had to be asked twice. They tumbled up the steps, hastily wiping shoes on the kitchen rug before reconvening in the dining room. Castiel felt his eyes drawn to the mirror which still hung there like an accusing eye.

            “Why haven’t you gotten rid of the mirrors, Dean?” he whispered while Pamela and Celeste were otherwise engaged in moving about the room, feeling for cold spots.

            “Sally and Galliard won’t hear of it,” Dean hissed back. “I tell you, Cas, they’ve gotten strange. Or  _stranger_ , I should say. They claim the disturbances are all because I’ve changed so much in the house. Henry hardly ever changed anything. That’s why he kept the mirrors where they were even though he hated them.”

            “Why not cover them as he did, then?” Castiel pressed. “If they… bother you?”

            Dean set his jaw tightly, a tiny muscle working in his temple. “Because… I figure it’s better to know, y’know? Whether something’s in the room with me at any given point? Better that than always wondering.”

            “Mr. Winchester?” Pamela called then, heading for the door. “I’d like to go upstairs now. And then to this room of old artifacts Celeste tells me about.”

 

            They made an agonizing circuit of the house.

            Pamela declared the bedroom in which Castiel had slept during his last visit especially interesting. When he admitted that he’d woken to an unnatural freeze one morning, she nodded as if it confirmed just what she’d suspected.

            The main staircase held some unpleasantness as well, she declared—though not as bad as the dining room or cellar.

            But, perhaps most surprising was the Green Parlor. Castiel had expected her to deem it a veritable den of evil intent, yet she told them something else entirely. “Oh, here,” she said to herself immediately upon entering. “This is where we’ll have the séance. It’s safe here.”

            “I’m sorry, what?” Castiel demanded, taking in the slew of battleaxes and stuffed owls and occult rings that Pamela could not see.

            “Your grandfather knew what he was doing with these things,” she went on to Dean, unperturbed. “He was well-educated in the supernatural. Everything here has a protective purpose. Holy enchantments have been sunk into the very floorboards.”

            “If he was so clever, why couldn’t he ditch his murder victims a little better?” Dean muttered darkly.

            “Oh, Henry Winchester did not kill that woman,” Pamela replied with dismissive certainty.

            “No?”

            “No. I’m beginning to form a picture of how he conducted his business here. But please let’s set up the table now. We will need four candles.”

            “What about your spirit board?” Celeste asked as Castiel uprooted four old beeswax tapers from a wall sconce and set them on the single clear table in the room.

            “No, I’ll be seeking a more direct connection, I think,” Pamela answered. “But first someone find us a good deal of salt. And something iron for each person to hold.”

            “He kept tons of salt in here,” Dean said, crouching to pull open a low cabinet and drag out two heavy roughspun sacks. “What do you want me to do with it?”

            “Just keep it at hand. Under the table. The iron?”

            “These crosses are rusty,” Celeste observed, clunking down several barbarous-looking works of Gothic Christianity. “Definitely iron.”

            “Good. I don’t think we’ll need them, but I did promise Lenore I’d be careful.” Pamela smiled thinly.

            “But if you have all this for repelling ghosts, won’t that… keep you from bringing her here? The Green Lady, I mean?” Castiel wondered aloud, and then promptly snapped his mouth closed. He had told Pamela he didn’t believe. He had tried to tell himself he didn’t believe.

            No one seemed to notice. “The salt and iron aren’t for her,” Pamela said.

            Dean’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

            “She’s not the one I’m worried about.”

            “Are you saying there’s  _another_  spirit in the house?”

            “Very likely. Sit down, Mr. Winchester.”

            Castiel took a seat between Dean and Celeste, the chair seeming to prickle cold as ice through his clothing. Four grown people barely fit around the table and Castiel found his knees wedged against the sacks of salt on one side and Dean’s left leg on the other. In any other circumstances, he might have blushed to feel it, but now he could only be glad of the simple human contact, Celeste’s presence almost as reassuring on his opposite side.

            Night had not yet fallen, but the room slept in a darkness near worthy of it. The woodwork looked miles away above them, the creaking corners thick with lacy shadows. When Pamela lit and positioned the candles, their meager glow grabbed the eye’s attention and threw everything else into even greater obscurity.

            “I require nothing from you but your hands and your courage,” the medium announced as they obligingly closed the circle. Celeste’s soft white hand felt much warmer than Dean’s. Yet Dean gripped tighter. 

            Pamela bowed her head, her lips moving in a silent recitation. Castiel knew not what she said, but he saw the same pattern pursed out over and over, faster and faster. By the time her eyes snapped up, so wide and blank, Castiel found himself leaning forward until the table edge bit sharply against his chest.

            _“Now. Speak to me. Come up and speak to me, wronged lady.”_

He felt Celeste flinch beside him. Pamela’s voice sounded deep as the Atlantic and thick as old wine. One felt it in the gut, like the relentless, commanding thump of a locomotive engine. All at once, Castiel felt very glad that Pamela Barnes was on their side.

_“Tell me how many winters you have paced this house.”_

            A draft tickled through their midst. It felt damp and dirty. It made Castiel press his mouth tight against it and shift uncomfortably in his seat. One of the candles guttered out.

            “Seven in life. More than seventy in death,” Pamela conveyed quietly some moments later. “So she says.  _Tell me your name, wanderer.”_

            Again, a pregnant pause. The draft licked over everything, making Pamela’s hair shiver in strands from its coiled confines.

            “Winchester. It is Elizabeth Winchester. Your great-grandmother, sir.”

            Castiel knew somehow that the gown he’d seen on the clawing phantasm in the mirror had been one in the same with that in the bedroom portrait. He had only done his best to forget.

            “It can’t be. She was buried by the vineyard already,” Dean protested hoarsely.

            “A coffin full of stones. A lie.” Pamela drew in a deep breath, pressing on.  _“You were harmed here. You were betrayed here. Tell me why you do not go.”_

            Pamela’s brow furrowed, her eyes screwed shut. She remained locked in silence longer than ever. Another candle snuffed out.

            “It is convoluted. She has never tried to describe it before. But I think the other one is keeping her here. Either by force or by guilt. She does not want it left unchecked and it does not want her to get out.  _It does not want her out even now_.”

            A great blow rattled the parlor door in its frame then, making everyone but Pamela exclaim and duck as one. “Hold the circle!” she barked, her tone brooking no argument. “Hold the circle. It cannot touch us here. It cannot touch the enchantments. It cannot touch anything… green.” She scowled then, shaking her head. “I… I don’t know why I said that just now. I don’t know what it means.”

            The door groaned on its hinges, a sharp pop of splintered wood punctuating the deadly force that seemed to press large as a leviathan on the other side. Castiel gaped mutely at it, near hyperventilation as he dug his fingernails into Dean’s palm.

            _“Tell me if this is the one who murdered you. Tell me now, Elizabeth.”_

            To Castiel’s amazement, Pamela gave voice to an answer almost instantly this time. “No. She says no. I find that difficult to believe—”

            Only one candle remained. The one closest to Dean. Castiel did not know what was set to happen when the last light died, but he felt certain it could be nothing good.

            _“Tell me why it keeps you!”_  Pamela shouted over the reverberating protest of the door.  _“If it is not your killer, tell me who!”_

            The draft billowed up like a sheet of gauze around them. Castiel felt it more keenly than ever, his breath catching painfully as the dank kiss of it seemed to envelope his very throat. He stared desperately at the remaining candle flame, the tiny teardrop of light all he could focus upon.

            The flame winked out.

            “Quickly!” Pamela snapped into the darkness, abruptly breaking off from Dean and Celeste. “Mr. Milton, take up that salt. Mr. Winchester, the crosses.”

            “What? But what happened? What did she say?” Dean pleaded, standing and looking down at her with a glare somewhat spoiled by his obvious terror.

            “There’s no time! She’s gone now! He’s not!”

            “He who? The thing at the door?” Dean demanded, but he nevertheless picked up two weighty hunks of metal, holding their cruciform shapes upside down as if by dagger hilts. Meanwhile, Castiel had heaved up a sack of salt, working open its drawstring and spilling a small dune of it out upon the table.

            “Yes,” Pamela panted, her touch skipping and stuttering over the table until she laid hold of a twisted iron cross herself. “We are going to open that door and—”

            “Open it?!” Celeste clutched at her own neck like a dying woman.

            “Open it and throw everything we have at him. It will buy us some time to get out. When we do, we’re going to need a spade. Do you know where we can find one?”

            “The stable has a whole damn rack of them, but—”

            “Good. I will open the door. The moment I do, Mr. Milton and Miss Middleton must fling as much salt as they can. And, Mr. Winchester, if you will be so kind as to thrust those crosses at anything you see—and I mean  _anything_ —we may just make it.”

            “May?” Castiel couldn’t help but repeat.

            But Pamela seemed not to hear. She rushed toward the door, her hand on its visibly trembling handle. “Is everyone ready?”

            Surprisingly, they were. At least as ready as they could be. Castiel and Celeste flanked Dean, Castiel with the sack under one arm and Celeste having taking up a great shallow shield into which she’d scooped a good ten pounds of salt.

            “Yes,” Dean answered through gritted teeth.

            Pamela jerked the door free. It banged against the wall with more vehemence than she ever could have lent it, the sound of cracking plaster nearly drowning out the swift hiss made by a wave of salt leaving Celeste’s makeshift bowl. Castiel followed suit before he could even see out the door, a second dose of salt in hand the moment the first left his sweating palm.

            A baneful wail met them and the hail of salt. Castiel thought he saw something—roughly human-sized—melt away like fog but could not be sure before Dean was pulling him forward at his side. “Go! Go now!”

            They fled through the library and down the hallway as one, Pamela keeping pace with one hand on the back of Celeste’s collar. Two short yards from the door, however, she gasped and recoiled. A second later, Castiel felt it himself. A choking cold. A fear and desperation so solidly frozen it could never now hope to change. “Dean!”

            Dean spun with the iron crosses, lashing out at the form reaching for them. It tattered in half, the cold breaking.

            Hauling open the door, they ran flat-out down the driveway now, the ladies hiking up their skirts one-handed. Thin, tea-stained light speared low over the naked trees, threatening sunset and glinting off the old shield Celeste still carried.

            “What about the servants?” Castiel called, lungs burning.

            “I pray they are well, but this is the fastest way to help them if they are not,” Pamela answered as Celeste pulled her to a halt in the stable yard. Dean and Castiel rushed in, startling a round of nickering shrieks from the stalled horses. Their steamy snorts reminded him of the ghostly Green Parlor caress of what he could only imagine had been Elizabeth Winchester. He felt his gorge rise involuntarily.

            “Here.” Dean was pressing the worn smooth handle of a shovel into his hands, taking up another himself. “I don’t know what good these are about to do us, but I figure two is better than one.”

            “Where is the family plot?” Pamela demanded the moment they emerged.

            “Back this way,” Dean replied, heading off toward a spindly dirt path framed by grape vines only to turn on his heel a second later, an odd look on his face. “ _Why_?”

            “Because we are going to dig up a piece of it.”

            “You mean we’re going to exhume a body?” Castiel stared at her.

            “We can argue the propriety of it while you dig.” Pamela shooed them all forward into the gloom of the arbor. “I hope he won’t try to reach us here. The house is his primary haunt. But if he realizes what’s happening, he may be able to force an exception.”

            Castiel had never seen Eden Hill’s cemetery before. A small fenced enclosure, its brown grasses grew in long, windblown clumps, untouched by the browsing of sheep. A few wild cornflowers still swayed around the stones, their bright blue starbursts eerie in the otherwise desolate landscape. Only one plot in the corner stood bare of grass, its marker a plain wooden cross: the new and nameless grave of Elizabeth Sykes Winchester. Her older, engraved one rose up directly before Castiel’s feet, its marble marker topped with a solemn angel.

            “Find me Edward Winchester’s tombstone,” Pamela instructed, reaching out herself to begin tracing carved words with her fingers.

            “It’s right here,” Castiel said, looking toward the grave next to Elizabeth’s. “Born 1774, died 1826,” he read. “‘ _Devoted husband to Elizabeth and father to Henry._ ’”

            “That’s him,” Pamela proclaimed. “Her husband. He didn’t kill her, but he’s our problem spirit. I’m not certain why, but she runs from him and he pursues her. Over and over.  _He’s_  the one who wants nothing changed in the house, and he’s grown more obsessed and vengeful than she. Get digging. Please.”

            “But why?”

            “It’s the most certain way to send him on. Pouring salt over the body and setting fire to it. I admit I haven't done it often. But I think it warranted here.”

            “You’d better be right about this,” Dean sighed shakily and made the first sharp cut into the turf.

            The top layer of sod had hardened through late autumn, and their labor went all the more painfully for it. Within minutes, both Dean and Castiel had shed their coats, attacking the stubborn earth with jab after vicious jab of their spades as sweat bathed their backs. Pamela sat nearby, her glass eyes half-lidded and her mouth moving in another methodical, mute litany while they worked. Celeste kept watch by the gate. When it grew too dark for the men to see, she gathered dry twigs and used the shield basin as a brazier.

            When the pit yawned too deep to reach the bottom from the edge, they traded off descending into it. Though the cemetery yielded up more crumbly earth at this depth, Castiel’s sides and shoulders still screamed with overuse. He felt cold and hot all at once, his muscles knotting against the chill wind and fraying under the labor. Three separate blisters on his hands tormented him with every downward heave on the shovel’s handle. But, though Dean seemed to fare better, Castiel could not leave it all to him. He could not flag now under Dean’s earnest, distressed gaze. He had to—

                A hollow crunch announced his impact with something other than dirt. Castiel stumbled back against the root-threaded wall of the grave, wary of putting a foot through a rotten coffin lid.

            “Here, I’ll do it,” Dean offered, extending his arm and helping Castiel pull himself back up to the world of the living.

            Castiel caught his breath on the edge while Dean leapt down. He broke up and tossed away pieces of what may have once been a fine walnut casket, the dirt having long ago sifted past it enough to fill in certain areas, until he came face-to-face with his great-grandfather.

            “I didn’t really expect to meet so many dead relatives this way,” he muttered at the yellow skull, brushing away as much dust as he could. “You brought that salt, didn’t you?”

            The sack had made it all the way out of the house with Castiel, only some of it spilled in the course of their frantic dash. He lowered it to Dean, who spread a thick layer all over the exposed skeleton.

            “I don’t know how we’re going to get a good fire going down there,” he lamented as Castiel hauled him back out. “There might be a little lamp oil around the barn—”

            “No,” Pamela interrupted. “I only need a handful of fire.”

            “Well, we’ve got that,” Celeste said.

            “Give it to me, if you please.”

            “The shield’s too hot to touch now,” Celeste warned, nudging it toward the medium with her booted foot.

            “Nonsense.” Pamela whispered a few words, deftly spat into her palms, rubbed them together, and lifted the metal shield without further ado.

            “Oh!” Celeste cried, but Pamela showed no sign of pain. She whispered again, swirling the burning contents of the shield like wheat she intended to separate from chaff. Rather than guttering out as Castiel would have expected, however, the sticks and bark flared higher and higher, reaching what looked like a completely unsustainable crescendo just before Pamela overturned the whole raging thing into the grave.

            Flames burst over Edward Winchester like a wave, filling the earth with a veritable bonfire. Sparks climbed, spangling the inky sky and making Castiel stumble back. “How on earth did you do that?” he gasped.

            “A very small spell. I only have a few, but— _no!”_

One moment Castiel was squinting into the brightness of the fire, the next he was falling against the nearest tombstone, his elbow cracking sharply enough to jerk instant tears from his eyes. An ungodly howl swept over him, full of teeth and frost and—  

            And then Dean screamed.

            Scrambling upright, Castiel saw Dean as if through a curtain of broken stained glass. A wavering figure accosted him, pale hands raking madly at his collar and hair, pulling him away from the rest by any frantic grip possible.

            Castiel had no idea what he said or what sound he uttered in that moment, but he knew he had never experienced such consuming despair in all his life. He felt like the marble angel atop Elizabeth Winchester’s false grave, limbs and face locked in eternal grief. Dimly, as if through fevered eyes, he saw Celeste throwing the last of their salt, Pamela brandishing her cross. The apparition shivered apart under this assault but only briefly. Its spectral frock coat danced with reflections of the flames that still ate away at the bones below, but still it persisted.

            Mindlessly, hopelessly, Castiel staggered forward and seized Dean from behind, one arm crooked around his neck, the other around his midriff. Cold lashed him as the ghost tore around and through the both of them now, but Castiel refused to be put off, his face buried in Dean’s shoulder.

            “Be gone!  _Be gone!_ ” Pamela all but roared, her voice quavering at the very limits of her influence. “I banish you!”

            The fire leapt aloft, so white hot and so close that Castiel felt his cheek glow painfully with it, smelled the bitter scent of scorched hair and wool—

            All at once, Dean’s weight sagged against him. The tower of fire burst like a balloon, its fury dying with a sigh.

            When Castiel looked up, the phantom had gone.

            Dean gulped for air, his eyes wide and his face stark white. “Are you all right?” Castiel asked, gently releasing him.

            “Yeah. Yeah, I just—”

            “I know—”

            “I could  _hear it in my head_ , Cas. It sounded like my dad.”

            “It wasn’t,” Castiel insisted. “Edward Winchester may have sounded like your father, but—”

            “I don’t even remember exactly what it was saying, only—only I felt so  _guilty_. I felt so afraid and ashamed, Cas. I felt like I deserved whatever it was going to do to me—”

            “Stop it. Dean. Dean, look at me.”

            Dean did. His eyes searched Castiel’s face as if reading over something sacred for comfort. Slowly, he seemed to come back to himself. He cleared his throat gruffly, straightening and looking back to Pamela and the smoldering, crumbling grave.

            “Is it over?” he asked simply.

 

* * *

 

            Castiel would have paid a hundred dollars for it to have been over right then and there.

            Instead, Pamela pointed out that they needed to help Elizabeth Winchester on her way as well. It would be cruel, she said, to leave her spirit lingering simply because it posed little threat. The fresher dirt and shallower grave proved small consolation, however, to Dean and Castiel. All the life-and-death urgency had thoroughly drained from their weary limbs by the time they found themselves digging up their second plot of the night. Then, of course, they had to re-fill the desecrated pits and traipse back through the house as Pamela placed a series of purification charms. Dean ventured to the servants' quarters as soon as they neared them, discovering Tom, Sally and even Galliard just as fast asleep and unharmed as babes in their cradles. Huddled around the dining room stove afterwards, the four of them forced down some cheese and soda crackers with heavily watered wine. Celeste only picked at the food, half-asleep against the arm of her chair—and Castiel could muster little more energy himself—but at least the house felt real again.

            The mirror above the sideboard did not trouble him now. He saw Dean glance only once at it himself, a private half-smile pulling at his mouth. Pamela’s charm satchels had left the pleasant scent of dried herbs in their wake, and she had declared the stain of terror scrubbed as clean as it would ever get. Castiel sensed it, too. The suffocating press of a house that knew too much had lifted.

            That didn’t mean he much cared to sleep in the same room as he had on his last visit. When they all finally retired upstairs, the clocks tolling midnight, he felt a prickle of shame at his relief when Pamela chose the bedroom with Elizabeth’s portrait. Celeste retreated promptly into another down the hall, leaving Castiel the smallest chamber on the far side of Dean’s room. With a door directly between the two, it had probably originally served as a nursery off the master suite but Dean had naturally furnished it otherwise. A fine wrought-iron bed without posts or curtains sat beneath the room’s single window, a washstand and low couch completing its amenities. Castiel instantly preferred its coziness to the overbearing grandeur of the other rooms.

            “I’m drawing myself a bath,” Dean announced from the open door. “You interested?”

            “Oh, God yes,” Castiel admitted. His clothes had fairly glued themselves to his skin with the sweat and grime of their work. His hair hung lank and dirt had even found its way between his toes. He smelled ripe and he knew it. “I’ve never had occasion to bathe twice in as many visits to someone’s house,” he added ruefully.

            “Well, I’ve never been one for good clean fun,” Dean quipped, disappearing around the doorframe.

            Castiel overheard Dean running the tap that piped water down from the tank in the attic. It was an ingenious facility, really. Castiel had never seen its like until Galliard had explained it to him on his first tour. The copper pipes coiled down through the chimney, heating the water as it came. Alas, this configuration did not heat it as steaming hot as a kettle would have, and one had to frequently pause the faucet in order to give the descending water time to warm,  _and_  the isolated tank could not be used at all in the dead of winter, of course—but ingenious nonetheless. Henry Winchester had evidently taken an unusual shine to hygiene, crediting it for his long life, and had the pipes and standing tub installed some twenty years earlier.

            Castiel took his time laying out his clothes for the next day, dabbing salve on his blisters, and pacing the room while Dean finished his bath next door. A folding screen blocked off the tub from the rest of the bedchamber, but he didn’t know whether Dean would welcome conversation across it.

            He thought about everything that had happened to them in such a short while. He would have to reconsider his outlook on the whole world now, he supposed. Were all ghost stories true? Were all ghosts alike? How many people knew the truth as they did rather than merely suspecting? Castiel suddenly saw a good deal of his immediate future spent with the books in Eden Hill’s library.

            “Bath’s ready if you still want it,” Dean called from the door, wrapped now in a dark plaid dressing gown. He rubbed awkwardly at his damp hair. “Sorry for taking so long.”

            “I hardly noticed,” Castiel assured him truthfully, following Dean into his room.

            It proved dark as sin behind the heavy screen in the corner, the firelight only filtering haphazardly through the cracks and hinges. Castiel disrobed with haste, throwing his soiled clothes over a stool, and sank gratefully into the elaborate copper bath, tucking his knees up to fit. He scrubbed down with the bar of Marseille soap Dean had left for him, savoring the slip and glide of it even as the water rapidly cooled.

            “Cas, what do you think it wanted with me?” Dean’s voice issued from a surprising close proximity. He had to be sitting in the armchair directly on the other side of the screen.

            “I couldn’t say,” Castiel ventured, rubbing the back of his neck with a washcloth. “Maybe it knew you were part of the family. Or maybe it had simply had the opportunity to fixate on you more over these past months.”

            “Maybe,” Dean mused absently. Castiel could hear him rearranging the logs of the hearth, their papery crackle accompanied by a brief burst of new warmth.

            “I don’t think we’ll ever know the full story now, Dean,” Castiel went on. “Who killed Elizabeth, why she was buried in the cellar… But maybe it’s better that way. They’re gone. Make what you will of the house.”

            “ _Mm_ ,” Dean hummed noncommittally.

            “Are you falling asleep?” Castiel asked, trying to keep the smile from his voice.

            “No,” Dean harrumphed with good-natured defensiveness. He fell silent for a moment more before clearing his throat and coming out with, “Actually, I just, uh, wanted to thank you for all your help.”

            “I didn’t help you half as much as Pamela. And Celeste certainly proved her bravery,” Castiel deflected, finished washing now but unsure how to gracefully exit a bathtub in the midst of a delicate conversation.

            “I know. I know. They were worth their weight in gold. And Pamela may be a pro, but the other two of you didn’t owe me a damn thing—”

            “Except friendship,” Castiel interrupted. “What kind of friend would I be if I abandoned you in a situation like that? It would have been perfectly abominable.”

            “Not just any man would grip me tight while a vision straight out of Hell battled him for the privilege.”

            “Well—” Castiel sniffed, feeling the blood rising in his cheeks. He thanked God Dean could not see. “I—I do not count it very gallant. I panicked. That was all.”

            “You might have panicked and ran away,” Dean observed. “Instead you ran forward.” 

            “It did no good. It made no difference.”

            “I disagree. I’m afraid you’ll just have to deal with my undying admiration now.”

            Castiel snorted a quiet laugh, standing and pulling the rubber stopper. The tub emptied in a gurgling whirlpool, its waste water draining through yet another pipe to the outdoors. He took up a long white linen to dry, cloaking himself in its vast folds before peeking around the edge of the screen.

            Dean sat with his legs splayed out casually to the hearth, the strong turn of his bare calves silhouetted by the light. He had a hand planted on his forehead, fingers furrowed thoughtfully through his hair. He looked like a smoke-stained but achingly beautiful painting one might stumble upon in an obscure corner of a museum, tucked out of sight not for any lack of merit but for some indefinable hint of debauchery that made sensitive ladies look away and sensitive gentlemen look a little too long.

            Everything Castiel had ever felt for Dean—all the way back to that first moment when he’d ridden up to Eden Hill and smiled like a mischievous boy—seemed to pull together and knot tight in his chest. He hadn’t truly stopped thinking about him since he’d met him, he realized. And there he sat, more real and more available than ever, looking like a dream made flesh….

            “You were very brave, too,” Castiel offered, toeing at the fringe on the carpet.

            Dean gazed up, locking eyes with him. “You think so?”

            It sounded rhetorical somehow. Words to fill the space between them. Words to effectively stab one conversation in the back and start a new one. The look on Dean’s face announced it as clear as anything. Rising, he padded forward silently.

            “You know what I am, Cas,” he stated, voice plummeting to a gritty whisper.

            Castiel didn’t play dumb. He didn’t play innocent. He knew to what Dean referred. “Yes,” he breathed back, feet rooted to the spot.

            “But you…” Dean started, hauling in a deep breath. “You’re hard to figure. You’re different, I know. But maybe not in the way I want you to be.”

            Castiel opened his mouth to reply, to say that he  _could_   _be_ —he could be  _whatever Dean wanted_ —but an old doubt came slipping up his throat like a serpent, choking off the promise. Could he? Castiel desired Dean in a way he’d only ever heard about, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d never handled another body, that he didn’t know what he himself could enjoy.

            He must look a fool, standing there speechless and flushed. At least the ample pleats of linen hid the evidence of his growing arousal—

            “Cas,” Dean went on, eyes searching. “If you wanna turn right around and go back to your own room, I won’t stop you. In fact, I won’t ever mention it again. You have my word. But if you keep on standing there looking like that, I—” He paused, chewing his lower lip like he needed it to hurt, like he needed it to bleed. “Cas, if you keep on standing there looking like that, I am gonna have to kiss you.”

            Castiel didn’t move. A fear very different than the animal terror he’d felt all day held sway over him now. And it was, in some ways, worse for all its nuance. It was the fear of wanting something too fervently, seeing it so close, and knowing that it might not work. Knowing it might disintegrate most bitterly with one wrong move. Even so, he felt quite certain he could never live with himself if he didn’t let Dean Winchester kiss him. He’d spent too many nights thinking on it to back down now….

            “Can I?” Dean murmured to him secretively, a glint of gentle triumph in his eye now. “Can I, Cas?”

            He looked so pleased. So earnest. Castiel felt his breath coming fast and shallow. He nodded almost without moving a muscle—a tiny, tense jerk of his head—and took a single, strangely weightless step toward Dean—

            Dean’s mouth met his at a perfect, yearning angle, his lips parting in a swift, hungry invitation only to close fast over Castiel’s bottom lip the next moment. It hit Castiel harder than he ever would have imagined, instant heat coiling low in his gut, bleeding out to his extremities like a shot of whiskey. He gave a small and shockingly lewd cry of surprise, his embarrassment very quickly soothed by Dean’s reaction. Dean moved in closer, a faint snarl curling his lip as he kissed Castiel all the more eagerly.

            This act shouldn’t even share the same  _word_  with the dry, polite duty of kissing hands and cheeks, Castiel thought. He had never felt anything like it. Never thought it could go on so  _long_  while still feeling so  _new_ , while still demanding more of him. His hands found Dean’s sides, fists bunching in the flannel of his dressing gown. He felt the flesh beneath, too, giving under the press of his fingers. Dean smelled alive—brash and salty—and a little like the soap they’d both so recently used. Even when he finally broke the kiss, Castiel found himself inhaling as if he needed to memorize that scent and, with it, the immediacy of the moment.

            “What now, Cas?” Dean growled warmly, a hand skating down to Castiel’s swathed hip and pushing him with halting, deliberate insistence all the way against the arched footboard of the bed. “Tell me what you want.”

            “Dean—”

            “After what we’ve been through today, I swear I’d do anything for you,” Dean went on, breath hot as live embers against Castiel’s ear. “Just say the word and—hey, what’s the matter?”

            Castiel looked askance and then back, throat itching with suppressed emotion. Time seemed to be grinding to a standstill even as Dean retreated a step, reckless elation suddenly tempered by caution.

            “You do want this?” he asked. “Don’t you?”

            “I want  _you_ , Dean,” Castiel croaked, eyes pleading for understanding. “I’ve wanted you for some time. Only… only I’m not certain  _what_  I want.”

            Dean nodded soberly, considering. “You’ve never done this before,” he finally said. It wasn’t a question.

            Despite himself, Castiel knew he colored. “Am I so transparent?”

            “No. No, if anything, you’re about as readable as a damn brick wall,” Dean huffed pleasantly. “But I can’t picture you risking your reputation for a cheap thrill. So I reckon it shouldn’t surprise me that you haven’t.”

            “It’s not only that. It’s just the way I am, Dean.”

            “I like the way you are,” Dean intimated with a sly, hesitant grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes. He punctuated his words with something like an affectionate head-butt, his lips skimming over Castiel’s temple. “And I don’t pretend not to be a  _little_  cheap,” he continued, swaying in, “but I can certainly make an effort for your sake.”

            “You’re not cheap, Dean,” Castiel chided.

            “You don’t know me so well.”

            When Castiel lifted his gaze from the smooth V of skin showing at Dean’s slipping neckline, it was to see his jaw clench in a brief, closed-off grimace, eyes fixed. Something about it made Castiel’s very chest ache.

            “I know you’re strong and resourceful and caring,” he murmured. “If you’ve ever been anything else, I find it difficult to believe.”

            “Cas?”

            “Yes?”

            “Sit down?”

            Somehow Castiel found his feet to do so, stumbling around and sinking into the voluminous feather mattress. His bare feet curled and kneaded at the rug in nervous anticipation. Dean stuck with him like a warm, insinuating shadow, brushing against him from shoulder to thigh. With a soft grunt, he folded abruptly to his knees before Castiel.

            Falling barely level with Castiel’s throat now, Dean stretched to deliver a kiss to the underside of his jaw, lips rasping over the late-night growth of whiskers. His hands circled Castiel, sliding over linen, pulling it with an errant rustle from one shoulder….

            “Dean…” Castiel drew a trembling sigh as a calloused palm made its way down his back and around to his ribs.

            “You gotta tell me if I overstep, Cas.”

            Castiel could only nod, too overcome to think of such a thing as asking Dean to stop. Dean’s fondness and subtlety frankly amazed him. Somewhere deep inside, he’d always feared that liaisons between men were destined to be raw and brusque. A mere compulsion, limited to a few coarse acts and quickly satisfied. Crowley had certainly done nothing to dispel that notion with  _his_  insinuations. But Dean seemed to have every intention of luxuriating in Castiel. Every movement held a purpose. Every kiss felt like a world unto itself rather than a means to an end.  

            By the time Dean had unwrapped Castiel like a living (and heavily breathing) gift—peeling back the linen in stages until it gathered in artful folds about his hips—Castiel felt no sting of shame at his nakedness. Dean’s hands smoothed over the raised hairs on his forearms and his legs with equal devotion. He pressed a long, open-mouthed kiss to the flesh of Castiel’s inner thigh, eyes tilting up sidelong to gauge the response this earned. They looked so much darker now. Pools of swimming want. Castiel found himself cupping the side of Dean’s face, gently gripping at his hair… he didn’t know what to do, exactly, but he needed Dean to feel his appreciation somehow….

            Shifting even further forward, Dean now knelt square between Castiel’s knees. Almost like an afterthought, he shrugged off his dressing gown, revealing broad, freckled shoulders and a chest not so much chiseled as solid. Dean displayed a humble, padded bulk to his muscle that Castiel instantly loved. He could’ve stared for hours.

            But he did not have so very long. The next moment, Dean’s right hand met Castiel’s sorely pressing erection, clasping loosely and flicking up its length. Sensation seized him and Castiel gasped out a wordless encouragement.

            “All right, Cas?” Dean asked, pausing to lick his own palm before picking up an increasingly stirring rhythm.

            “Yes,” Castiel answered, eyes squeezed shut for a moment in an effort to keep himself together. He would not be unmanned so quickly.

            “Want me to use my mouth?” Dean suggested, his words tickling as he leaned in to softly bite at the peak of Castiel’s hipbone. “I could, y’know. Wouldn’t mind a pull or two on your cock…”

            “No,” Castiel gulped. “No, you don’t have to.” In truth, he preferred Dean’s mouth just as it was—talking to him.

            “Whatever you say,” Dean chuckled, squeezing and making Castiel flinch from the delicious tug of it. “I like this, too.”

            He liked it so much, in fact, that Castiel noted his free left hand disappearing below the edge of the bed. Dean flushed pink in the dancing shadows as he started in on himself.

            A fierce, wild affection gripped Castiel then. The sight of Dean taking pleasure in anything could drive him to distraction, and this—this was a whole new level of distraction. His hips rolled shallowly now to meet Dean’s every stroke, breath growing ragged and hoarse. Castiel caressed every available inch of the man kneeling between his legs until Dean seemed so taken by it—and so equally abashed by it—that he was downright giddy with smiles and trying to hide it in Castiel’s lap. They dissolved together into a blur of lust like that, and when Dean finally gave a bone-deep shudder, his mouth falling open against Castiel’s skin and his eyelids fluttering blindly, Castiel thought he’d never seen anything more captivating in all his life.

            That was what did it. Watching Dean. He’d never witnessed anyone in the grip of that most intimate relief before. The torrid bloom of life in his cheeks, the hitch in the soft, broken moan he made… Castiel clapped a hand over his own mouth as a much louder moan threatened to undo him, spilling several lashing stripes of his own release across himself and Dean’s fist.

            “My my, Cas,” Dean slurred pleasantly a moment or two later. “You make me think you almost enjoyed that.”

            “Perhaps… perhaps I’m only humoring you,” he managed, lying with every inch of his beaming smile.

            Dean winced as he clambered up off his knees. “How charitable of you.”

            With no more ado, he left his robe puddled on the floor and fell quite deliberately into Castiel’s spent, unresisting embrace. The air left his lungs in a surprised  _oof_  as Dean’s weight flattened him into the bed and their still oversensitive and softening cocks slid abruptly together.

            Castiel shied at the feeling but he savored it also, petting down Dean’s back and waiting for his heart to stop beating like a drum. Dean’s mirrored his on the opposite side, a faint thump in echo to his own.

            “What a strange day,” Castiel muttered sleepily into Dean’s hair. And remembered no more.

 

* * *

 

            Castiel had not shared a bed with anyone since the days of his childhood and adolescence when, forced to visit distant relations, he’d bunked with cousins on cramped cots and trundles.

            Such economizing nights had naturally done nothing to prepare him for the impact of waking with a bare knee tucked between his equally bare thighs and a quiet snore ruffling across his scalp.

            Coming to with a small jolt of recognition, Castiel quickly took stock and resolved the nest of limbs in which he rested into a sleeping Dean. The uncertain light of late autumn just barely colored the window casement beyond the velvet drape of bed-curtains. No birds yet sang of it. The house would just be starting to stir. They were in no danger of being disturbed.

            Castiel sighed and craned his head to get a glance at Dean’s face. It was slack with sleep, his large eyes faintly pink and puffy, his mouth parted in a tangle of loose breaths. He looked, perhaps, more lovely than ever.

            But then, catching sight of the rusty protrusion of an iron cross left carelessly sitting on the nightstand beyond Dean’s shoulder, the rest of reality came tumbling into sharp focus.

            His spine stiffened with shock, the enormity of all the less savory things they’d done—ripping open graves, setting fires, speaking with the  _dead_ —galloping through his mind like a sickness. He must have given life to his thoughts in some way or another, because Dean abruptly fidgeted, sniffed, and opened his eyes.

            Blinking callowly at him for a second, a grin like dripping honey spread slowly across his features. “Still humoring me, I see,” he observed in the garbled tones of dawn. It was a voice one would never hear beyond the immediate territory of a pillow. A voice that could not be replicated or feigned by even the most gifted actor. Castiel found himself so grateful for Dean’s presence then that he could hardly bear it.

            “Dean…” he began, whispering. “We should get up. Go early and make sure the brush stayed on the graves—”

            “I don’t wanna talk about that right now,” Dean said matter-of-factly.

            They had hastily concealed the freshly disturbed ground with weeds and clumps of turf, hoping their interference would not be so obvious as to attract the attention of youths passing by with their sheep and the like. But work done by night might hold up rather poorly to the scrutiny of day, Castiel thought, his mind racing. “I just think—”

            “I know,” Dean replied. “Later.”

            Biting his tongue, Castiel tried not to look at the grim reminder of the cross lying at Dean’s bedside.

            “No one’s going to see. No one’s going to know anything.” And suddenly Castiel knew that Dean was no longer speaking of the graves. Or at least not  _only_  of the graves.

            “Do you swear it?” Castiel asked, rolling laboriously so that they fully faced one another.

            “I swear it. No one who matters, anyway. It’ll be easy, Cas. Easier than you think. People don’t look twice at what men do. You can come out here as often as you like—for the fresh county air, you know—or I can even see you in your boarding house, and no one will raise an eyebrow. Not like they would at a woman doing the same. We’re gentlemen. Just two gentlemen passing the time.”

            As he said it, he came closer, his hips nudging against Castiel. The vagaries of sleep had half-stiffened him, and suddenly Castiel had the warm swell of an erection not his own pushing against his stomach.

            “Are you suggesting we… pass some time… right now?”

            “If you’re game,” Dean went on, his imagination clearly now wandering along with his fingers.

            Despite himself, Castiel felt a prickle of nerves. He realized that one act of passion with Dean had not absolved him of all future awkwardness. Each new tryst would come with its own lessons and surprises. He might misstep or breach some unspoken etiquette. Dean might have cause to laugh. Castiel would have to accept that.

            Trying to forgo any notion of what might be expected of him, Castiel followed the first impulse his body conjured and simply returned Dean’s provocations, moving against him until the flesh and hollows of their figures locked in a throbbing press. Fresh beads of wetness bloomed and spread between them, dragging a groan from Dean. Castiel kissed him through it, feeling the reverberation against his own lips.

             “Will you—” Castiel started.

             “Yes,” Dean said before he could even finish.

             “Will you— _mm_ —” he continued amid the hot pant of another kiss “—on top of me?”

            Dean obliged without hesitation. He rolled onto Castiel in one tremendous, fluid movement, blindly grasping the headboard with one hand to steady himself as he bore down, their hips driving together. It felt worlds different from the smarting slip of contact Castiel recalled occurring after last night’s exertions. Now, fully hard and dripping with need, their cocks rubbed against one another with fevered compulsion. The sensation pulled at Castiel, making him ache in the best of ways. He buried his face in the crook of Dean’s neck, trying and failing to keep his racing, labored gasps to himself as he raised one leg under the quilts so he might curl it snug around Dean’s side—a secret second embrace that all at once made him feel as if they were truly coupling. There was a _rightness_ to it that fairly took his breath away—

            “Mr. Winchester, sir?”

            The voice and rap at the door shook him rudely from his trance. The both of them surfaced with soft, abortive noises, Dean extracting himself just enough to lopsidedly prop up on one elbow.

            “I’m, uh, I’m dressing, Sally. What is it?” he called hoarsely.

            “It’s just… why, the house is mayhem, sir!” she replied, a touch of indignation in her tone now. “Mud tracked all over the halls and staircase, your grandfather's things thrown about the Green Parlor, doors and cabinets standing open… sir, there is a  _shovel_  in the  _kitchen_.”

            “Ah…” Dean stalled loudly. “Hm. Yes. Yes, that was me.”

            “A  _mucking_  shovel.”

            “I know.”

            “For  _manure_ , sir—”

            “I know damn well what sort of shovel it is, Sally!” Dean finally snapped as Castiel stifled a laugh against his chest. “Let a man get out of bed in peace, can’t you?”

            “But I thought you said you were dressing, sir?”

            “Just—I’m—for God’s sake, go start some coffee!” Eyes closed, he turned back to Castiel, the very picture of tested patience as he counted out Sally’s footsteps retreating away. “Now,” he said quietly. “Where were we?”

 

            When Castiel stepped out into the hallway—from his own chamber’s door—and greeted Pamela and Celeste, who were descending together toward the rising scent of coffee, he couldn’t help but wonder with a private thrill whether they could tell he carried himself differently. Whether they could somehow glean, from his furtive manner, that he sported a livid love-bite on his breast—a token bestowed on him in a fit of passion by none other than the master of the house. Whether they could  _smell_  the vulgar glow of it all still lingering about his person…

            Probably not.

            They smiled blithely at him and asked after his health.

            “Oh, my physician would be pleased with all the exercise, I’m sure,” he returned, rolling his shoulders ruefully. “A decade of pushing paper didn’t really prepare me for manual labor.”

            “You comported yourself admirably, Mr. Milton,” Pamela insisted. “Not everyone can keep their head in a paranormal crisis.”

            They exchanged more odd pleasantries as Castiel escorted Pamela down the stairs and saw both the ladies seated at the dining room table. Dean had preceded him by ten strategic minutes and was already topping off a second steaming cup of coffee. “I’m told there’s porridge and more porridge if anyone’s hungry,” he announced. “We’ve really been neglecting the pantry with all this going on.”

            “I never eat first thing in the morning anyway. Clouds the mind,” Pamela demurred while Castiel and Celeste accepted their bowls of porridge and honey without complaint. In fact, Castiel spooned his down with relish, suddenly starved (and not much caring if it clouded his mind).

            Sally shortly excused herself to go tend to the ailing Galliard while Dean swore up and down that he would tidy the ransacked house himself.

            “You two really weren’t shy with the salt,” he observed, heading out into the hallway with an ancient-looking broom.

            “You’re  _welcome_ ,” Celeste called.

            As soon as they’d finished eating, Castiel excused himself to return the offending shovel to its rightful place, eager for a breath of fresh air. A thick hoarfrost had bristled up overnight, the white froth of it coating every branch and stone, and Castiel hugged his coat tight around himself as he made his way to the stable. He pumped water and threw hay for the horses while he was at it, rather enjoying the invigorating simplicity of an outdoor chore or two. Then he wound his way back to the Winchester cemetery, letting himself through the creaking gate and surveying the site of their night’s work.

            The sod they’d tamped back over the graves _had_ done an unexpectedly decent job of concealing their violation. But Castiel did discover several areas of burnt black grass around Edward Winchester’s plot. He pulled these up and scuffed loose dirt over the remains. It would have to do.

            On his return to the house, Castiel met the Saturday postman arriving on a shaggy gray mare. He accepted the mail on the doorstep, grateful to now be possessed of an excuse to ask after Dean’s whereabouts the moment he stepped in the door.

            “He’s putting the Green Parlor back together,” Celeste answered from the dining room where she and Pamela were musing over a deck of tarot cards.

            Amid the handful of envelopes, Castiel found one for Galliard and set it upon a hallway table. The rest he took with him.

            “Do you mind if I choose a few books to borrow?” he asked Dean, stepping through the Green Parlor’s cracked door. A jagged wedge of old wood had popped out near the latch, and the whole thing looked ready to shiver to pieces with one good kick. “I want to know what they have to say on the subject of hauntings.”

            “Please, have at it,” Dean said with a wave of his hand before taking the mail and beginning to slit open the envelopes with a pocketknife.

            It took Castiel the better part of fifteen minutes to scan the shelves and find four reasonably readable volumes dealing with the spirit world. It was a start, he figured, paging through the introduction of _Household Apparitions_ by Sir Walter Hedgecombe.

            “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dean’s voice raised in something like cheerful shock from the other room. He sounded as one does when meeting an old friend in an unexpected place. “Sammy, you sly son of a gun…” he went on, words and footsteps coming closer as he tracked down Castiel between the library’s shelves.

            “What is it?”

            “My brother,” Dean answered, looking up with almost childlike wonder from a letter he held. “He’s getting married.”

            Castiel relinquished the books for the moment, crossing over to Dean with a dawning smile. “Well, that’s great. Isn’t it?”

            “Yeah,” Dean laughed, shrugging. “Only it’s hard for me to think of Sam as old enough to marry. Even if he is 26.”

            “I felt the same about my sister. Who’s the fortunate young lady?”

            Dean fumbled in the envelope for a moment before producing a small _carte-de-visite_ showing the heavily gowned figure of a fair-haired girl. The print’s faded gold albumen tones showed scant detail, but her cheeks looked pleasantly plump and her hands appeared gloved in lace. “Miss Moore,” Dean went on, “of St. Louis. He started mentioning her last summer, but I just didn’t reckon… well, anyway, the wedding’s in a month.”

            “Good God, you must be in St. Louis before Christmas?”

            Dean shrugged. “It’s about three days by rail this time of year. And I’ll stay a week or so. Have I told you Sam’s a lawyer?” he continued with a faint smile. “Like you. I haven’t seen him since he passed the bar.”

            “Sounds like you’ll have several things to celebrate when you see each other,” Castiel said, returning the photograph.

            “Sounds like,” Dean agreed, seemingly lost in thought for a moment. “And I can afford to give him one _hell_ of a wedding gift now.”

            Castiel recalled all too well that Henry’s will had specified his entire inheritance should go to John or, in the event of his passing, the eldest of his sons. It had made no mention of splitting the fortune. Given Henry and John’s extreme estrangement, Castiel wondered if the elder Winchester had even known how many grandchildren he had.

            “From what he’s told me, I think he’s doing pretty well for himself out there but, the way I see it, he deserves some of this crusty old money at least as much as I do. I wonder if he’d let me buy them a house….” 

            If someone had told Castiel as recently as twelve hours ago that they would by now have defeated the ghost, consummated their decidedly mutual attraction, and end up calmly discussing Dean’s brother’s wedding, he couldn’t have scoffed any harder. Yet here they were. So much could change in one night.

            “I wish I could take you with me,” Dean mused, stepping forward into Castiel’s space.

            “That probably wouldn’t be wise.”

            “I know,” Dean groaned dramatically. “But _think_ of it, Cas. Bunked in one of those fancy Pullman cars? With some Ohio farm or other off in the distance? Nothing but you and me and a cold night….” He sidled closer, lips trailing over Castiel’s ear.

            “That does sound nice.”

            “And you’ve never been west of the Mississippi.”

            “But I can’t go and you know it,” Castiel murmured, kissing the soft indentation at the corner of Dean’s mouth before averting his eyes.

            “No harm in pretending.” Dean let his fingertips trail up and down Castiel’s arm. “By the way, while you were out Pamela mentioned wanting to get back to town today. So we might not have another chance to be alone. Let me say my goodbyes now?”

            “It’s hardly goodbye, is it?”

            “No. No, not hardly.” And then his lips were on Castiel’s, a warm swipe of his tongue licking once into his mouth before retreating just as fast. Castiel wrapped a hand around the nape of Dean's neck and held him there for a breathless moment, surrounded by the scent of old books and the silence of a good morning.

 

            Castiel didn’t see how much Dean paid Pamela Barnes, but he suspected a handsome sum. He’d taken her aside in the foyer for a few words and the exchange of an envelope before they all traded farewells and Castiel, Celeste, and the obviously pleased medium all piled once again into Tom’s coach.

            The coach rocked forward and Castiel had just gotten comfortable when he glanced once more back at Eden Hill’s grand façade. Dean had closed the door, but Castiel scanned the house anyway, silently wishing he’d caught one last glimpse of him. Instead, his eyes landed on a gaunt figure outlined in a second floor window, his long white hand spread wide against the frosted pane. Galliard was fully dressed and far from the servant’s quarters, Castiel realized with a jolt of confusion. The butler’s gaze had locked hard on the departing coach, but he did not wave. Only tucked something into his pocket and turned back into the shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, let me just say I'm very sorry for how long this took to update. I hit a real patch of writer's block the second half of last year (combined with just a lot of other activities) and this story just couldn't be half-assed. The long chapters I (for some reason) decided on didn't make it any easier. Anyway, I'm much happier with it now, and am looking forward to Part 3 (which will probably be the longest).


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